Don Banks needs to spend a few more minutes thinking out his Snap Judgments

From Don Banks latest Snap Judgments column, comes this:

If we're talking about strictly the most valuable player in the league, how can you argue that anyone means more to his team than Matt Cassel does to the Chiefs?

Anyone who knows how to say the "Phillip Rivers," "Tom Brady," or "Peyton Manning"* instantly has a better argument than any Cassel for MVP advocates.

For serious, Matt Cassel is, by just about any metric, a marginally above average quarterback. At best, he's the third most valuable component on his own team's offense behind Jamal Charles and Dwayne Bowe. Meanwhile, Rivers, Brady, and Manning are far and away the most important players on their team's offense and are better than Cassel in every metric.

*I don't necessarily think those should be the top 3 finishers in the MVP vote; those guys are both in the same conference as Cassel and obviously more valuable at his position than him.

We saw what [The Chiefs] were without [Cassel] last week at San Diego, when Kansas City produced just 67 yards of offense in a 31-0 loss.

Brody Croyle is awful, but there's no way that the dropoff between Cassel and Croyle is as profound as the gulf of talent between Rivers, Brady, Manning, and their respective backups.

But in Sunday's 27-13 Chiefs' win at St. Louis, Cassel helped keep his club in first place in the AFC West, throwing for 184 yards and a touchdown

With numbers like that, they might as well just rename the MVP award: "The Matt Cassel Award for Best QB EVAR!!"

With Cassel back, the Rams (6-8) couldn't just key on the Kansas City running game like San Diego did.

The Rams stink. The Chargers don't.

The result was the Chiefs (9-5) rumbled for 210 yards rushing, with Jamaal Charles leading the way with 126 yards and a touchdown on just 11 carries.

MVP = Most Valuable Player-who-hands-the-ball-off-on-nearly-every-play