ARLINGTON, Texas — It was a big test for the Minnesota Vikings in Week 10, tasked with traveling to Dallas to face the NFC East-leading Cowboys on "Sunday Night Football," and they definitely passed.
It might've taken every bit of their No. 2 pencil to get the job done in the end, but when the Scantron was turned in at the end of the night, they had landed a 28-24 victory at AT&T Stadium to land at 7-3 on the season -- keeping pace with the Green Bay Packers, who sit atop the NFC North with an 8-2 record. The Vikings got off to a fast start on Sunday night, fueled in large part by forcing the Cowboys to stumble out of the gate to a slow one, jumping all over Dallas with a 14-0 lead in the first quarter.
Both of those touchdowns came at the hands of tight end Kyle Rudolph, and in the first quarter, with one being an acrobatic one-hand grab in the back of the end zone that made everyone's jaw hit the floor.
The Cowboys would battle back to make it a 17-14 affair at the half, and a nail-biter as the clock wound down in the fourth quarter, but Rudolph's touchdowns helped keep the Cowboys right where the Vikings wanted them -- which was beneath their cleats.
"It's huge," Rudolph said after the win. "We talked about it earlier in the week. If we want to get to where we want to be, then we had to get a win down here tonight. So to come on the road against a really good football team, it took literally all of 60 minutes. We knew we were going to get it done."
A wild Week 10 is almost in the books and there's a lot to go over. Fortunately Will Brinson, John Breech, Ryan Wilson and Sean Wagner-McGough are here to break everything down on the latest episode of the Pick Six Podcast. Listen to the full show below and be sure to subscribe right here for daily NFL goodness fired into your eardrums.
As far as the aforementioned Cirque du Soleil catch goes, Rudolph isn't even sure quarterback Kirk Cousins wasn't trying to simply toss the ball out of the back of the end zone to prevent the sack, and nor does he care.
"I still haven't asked Kirk if he was throwing it away or not," Rudolph admitted. "But I saw the ball in the air. I was bug for us to get off to a fast start. If we wanted to get out of here with a win tonight, then we had to start fast, and we did that.
"As an offense, we can't go into a lull like we did at the end of the first half. We've got to keep applying pressure and keep our foot on the gas pedal if we want to keep beating good teams."
Rudolph played a big part in that, again becoming a dominant threat in the red zone.
"It's big," he said. "It's what I've done my whole career. It's what I made a name doing, so it was good to be back involved. Kirk showed a lot of trust in me. Both of those throws were in traffic. That's what we've been working on, that trust -- throwing balls up in traffic and I just go get them."
Rudolph wasn't the only one doing damage in North Texas, and while his impact cooled as the game went on, running back Dalvin Cook's did not.
"For us, we know we run the football," Rudolph said. "This team is going to win football games by running the football, so that was big. Anytime you can get the ball in Dalvin's [hands], it just takes a little bit of a crease."
Cook, who made it clear his goal was to "outrush" Ezekiel Elliott in Week 10, was the key driver on the Vikings' scoring drives in the first quarter with timely and gashing receptions, and although he was bottled up in the run game for much of the evening, that eventually all changed against a fatigued Cowboys defensive front. The league's leading rusher ended his night with 97 yards rushing and 183 total yards from scrimmage with a touchdown -- the second-most yards from scrimmage in his career.
"I felt great," Cook said following the game. "We got a big win. It's special -- 'Sunday Night Football'. It's the moments we live for."
Between Cook and backup halfback Alexander Mattison, the Vikings handed the ball off a total of 34 times against the Cowboys, and owned time of possession by nearly eight minutes because of it.
"That's what [relying on the run game] looks like right there," Cook said. "That's the blueprint right there. Physical football, downhill, let's get the job done. We've got some guys up front that can move some people. That's the moving crew right there.
"Once they are going, they are going. You can sense the look in their eyes when they're ready to get the job done. I could see that look in their eyes [against the Cowboys]. You can see guys get up slowly.
"We saw [DeMarcus] Lawrence, [Antwaun Woods and Leighton Vander Esch] all getting up slow, and once you get that as a running back, that makes you run a little harder."
That he did, and in doing so, he ran the Vikings to within one game of the top seat in the NFC North.
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