Minnesota Vikings Best and Worst: Week 8 vs. Washington Redskins

More good stuff

On offense, the absolute best thing was Dalvin Cook. In a game where he was relatively quiet, he ran the ball 23 times for 98 yards and one touchdown. Plus, he added five catches for 73 more yards, finishing second on the team in receiving yards.

Getting Cook involved in the passing game to go with a great ground performance can do nothing but help the Vikings offense, especially when a great weapon like Adam Thielen wasn’t available for this game.

Here are some other good things to come out of Week 8 for the Minnesota Vikings:

• Another big yardage game. Once again, Stefon Diggs needs to be praised for his pass-catching and ability to gain yards after the catch. While he will show up again later in this article, there is something to be said for catching all seven of his targets for 143 yards.
• Efficiency at quarterback. It feels weird to talk about two people here who didn’t score touchdowns on the day. However, Cousins did a great job of spreading the ball around to seven different targets, completing all but three of his 26 passes on the day.
• Oops, he did it again. Another week has passed and Eric Kendricks once again led the way in tackles. This game, he had seven takedowns and three of them being solo. He added one pass defense as well.
• Dominating the time of possession. Minnesota had the ball for 13 minutes and 12 seconds more than Washington in this game, as they controlled the pace of the game with 38 rushing attempts compared to only 26 passes.
• No punts. Yes, the Vikings didn’t bring out their punter to kick the ball away a single time, although they probably should have on a failed fourth-down attempt and kicked a field goal on the other. Still, despite those decisions, Minnesota finished every other drive with points!