Hawkeyes Look to Keep Rolling at Minnesota

The bye week is over, the pig is packed for a road trip and the "OR" is back.

The Hawkeyes have taken a week of additional rest and practice but the question of who will be under center is back in the fore after Jeremy Hecklinski led Iowa to their first win west of the Rockies in a generation and Hank Brown continues to work back from his shoulder injury.

One of them will lead Iowa on the road for a second straight game as the #15 Hawkeyes head to Minneapolis to take on the 4-2 Minnesota Golden Gophers. It's Minnesota's homecoming, both teams are coming off byes and the winner gets to keep climbing in a Big Ten race that got messier while Iowa rested.

The Hawkeyes opened as 4.5-point favorites in this one according to FanDuel Sportsbook . That number has climbed to Iowa -6.5 with an over/under of 41.5 total points. That pencils out to an implied final somewhere around 24-17 Iowa. For a road trophy game against a team that has been solid much of the year, that's a statement about how these two teams are trending.

The Hawkeyes come in off their best power four performance of the season, having thoroughly dominated the Huskies at Washington. It was the first power conference opponent where Iowa topped 300 yards or 21 points all season and they did both in a single game. That helped the P4 averages up to 318 yards and 22.75 points per game. Both of those feel like winning numbers in Minneapolis.

Figuring out the Gophers requires accepting two facts at once. Minnesota beat both ranked teams they've played – 27-24 at Washington and 20-14 over Michigan for the Little Brown Jug. But both those teams are now unranked and they also got run out of their own building by Mississippi State 38-13 and thumped 41-13 at Purdue ahead of the bye.

Drake Lindsey has been a competent trigger man completing 64.8% of his passes for 1,335 yards with 9 touchdowns, but the picks are piling up (he's got five on the season). Iowa will surely look to add to that turnover number on Saturday and set up the offense for some short fields. Javon Tracy (yes, that is the younger brother of former Hawkeye and Boilermaker Tyrone Tracy) is the main target at 32 catches for 375 yards and a score. The Gopher defense has real pieces in Maverick Baranowski (team-high 45 tackles) and TJ Bush Jr. (4 sacks).

Minnesota's rushing offense ranks 129th in the country at 104.8 yards a game. It's running into Iowa's rush defense, which ranks 7th at 84.7 yards per game allowed and just held Washington to-3 yards on the ground. If that holds to form, Lindsey ends up throwing 35-plus times into a defense allowing 14.5 points a game, a pass rush that has 19 sacks and a secondary that is looking to earn their place among the ball Hawks.

On the other side, the key is simpler still. Minnesota's run defense is respectable (52nd) and its scoring defense middling (T-54th at 21.8). Iowa just hung 41 on the road with a balanced attack, but can they keep that momentum going in the run game to avoid becoming one-dimensional? Feed Moulton, stay out of third-and-long, don't gift the homecoming crowd a short field. Iowa's formula doesn't need to change in Minneapolis. It just needs to show up for four quarters.

Here's a quick look at the details for Saturday.

Date: Saturday, October 24th Time: 2:30 pm CT Matchup: #15 Iowa Hawkeyes (5-1, 2-1) at Minnesota Golden Gophers (4-2, 2-1) Location: Huntington Bank Stadium – Minneapolis, Minnesota TV: FS1 Updated Weather Forecast: Cloudy with temps in the upper 60s, 40% chance of rain in the afternoon FanDuel Opening Line : Iowa -4.5, O/U 40.5

Minnesota leads the all-time series 63-54-2 across 119 meetings dating back to 1891. But the trophy era says Iowa, 46-43-2 since 1935 – the year Iowa governor Clyde Herring and Minnesota governor Floyd Olson bet a live hog on the game. Minnesota won, Herring paid up with a pig named Floyd and the bronze version has been the best trophy in college football ever since.

Lately it's been a one-way relationship. Iowa won eight straight from 2015 to 2022, dropped the 12-10 "not a fair catch" game in 2023 – still Fleck's only win against Ferentz – then took it right back with 31-14 in Minneapolis in 2024 with the 41-3 demolition in Iowa City last year. Iowa has won 10 of the last 11 in the series and five straight trips to Huntington Bank Stadium. The Gophers haven't beaten Iowa at home in more than a decade.

For Iowa, this is step one of the six-game march we mapped out during the bye : win out, and the playoff resume takes care of itself. Nobody hands out credit for near-misses.

For Minnesota, the season funnels into this stretch. A homecoming upset of #15 Iowa would relaunch the Gophers' season. A loss makes it three defeats in four games with Indiana and UCLA still looming.

My take: the version of Minnesota that showed up against Michigan can absolutely win this game, but that version hasn't shown up in back-to-back weeks all season and Iowa certainly seems to be trending in the right direction on offense with a defense that is as solid as ever.