Play action as we intended (and hoped for)...

The play, on an afternoon that presented something close to ideal conditions for the 2019 Vikings, couldn’t have been much more favorable to Kirk Cousins: On a first-and-10 from the Raiders’ 35 in the first quarter, Cousins ran a bootleg out to his left after his play fake to Dalvin Cook sent the Raiders’ defense the other direction. Cousins set himself for more than a second, hopping twice before unleashing a strike back to his right for Adam Thielen.
The wide receiver’s outside stem caused Raiders safety Karl Joseph to bite hard on the possibility of a corner route, and as Thielen cut back toward the middle of the field, he separated from Raiders cornerback Curtis Riley. Thielen caught the pass in stride, eluded a diving tackle from Riley and strolled into the end zone.
“The bootleg there, I was just able to get the edge, had a clean edge, and then Adam did a really good job of winning across the
field, and we got the right look,” Cousins said. “When I can get the edge and stand there and be able to wait on Adam to cross the field, that’s the key to the play. And you know, last week they were taking away those edges or those clean edges. You couldn’t get them, so those plays weren’t able to develop.”
A week ago, the Packers resolved to take away Cousins’ play action shots first, giving up cutback lanes to Dalvin Cook by sending defenders at Cousins in an effort to take away his space to roll out. The Raiders gave Cousins more room to work on Sunday, and on a day where Dalvin Cook stole the show again, the quarterback could work from a favorable environment.
He hit seven of his nine play action attempts on Sunday, according to Pro Football Focus, throwing for 107 yards and a touchdown a week after going just 4-for-9 for 23 yards on play action against the Packers. It might not be so easy for Cousins to set up those play-action throws every week, but as teams are forced to honor Cook (the NFL’s leading rusher through three weeks), the quarterback could see more opportunities like the ones he had Sunday.
“I think to some degree they were still going split safety and taking away a couple of our opportunities to take some shots,” Cousins said. “There were a couple times I checked the play to run the ball because they were getting back and preventing other plays down the field. But it’s a beautiful thing when you can run the football effectively, get some single high looks, get some loaded boxes and then hit an explosive to a guy like Irv Smith. That’s a great thing when you don’t even have to get into third down, you can just, first, second, first, second, first, second. That’s not usually reality, but if you can do it, it’s a great thing.”
http://www.startribune.com/with-clean-edges-there-for-kirk-cousins-the-vikings-qb-thrived-on-play-action-against-the-raiders/561128332/