Oregon's road game at Iowa is getting all the upset buzz in Week 11 of college football, a Top 25 College Football Playoff matchup with a 100% chance of rain. The gametime weather forecast has been downgraded to 43 degrees, dropping to 41 by the fourth quarter.
When the Ducks moved to the Big Ten in 2024, this is what they signed up for: Cold weather, tough defenses, special teams, corn-fed offensive linemen and a pink opponent locker room at a raucous Kinnick Stadium.
Despite the 6.5-point spread, nearly all of the national opinion makers are predicting an Iowa upset. Kirk Herbstreit went on the Pat McAfee Show Thursday and whispered dramatically, "Oregon is going to lose." On his podcast Joel Klatt said, "I'm just telling you this is a dangerous game for Oregon."
The consensus is that Iowa's brand of physicality, toughness, discipline, defense and special teams will wrestle the game away from Oregon's speed and talent, put them in a 15-12/17-13 chokehold by the fourth quarter. The Iowa offense is not explosive, but they thrive on short fields and capitalizing on mistakes.
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Swimming contrary to this flash flood of national negativity about the Ducks ("Who have they beaten?" "What's their best win?" "That November schedule is so tough.") is CBS writer Cody Nagel, who writes, "The Ducks have repeatedly shown they can handle hostile environments, giving them a blueprint to silence the Kinnick crowd while putting pressure on Iowa's weaknesses."
Nagel points out that Oregon holds the nation's longest regular season road winning streak at 10 games, that during the Dan Lanning era UO is 15-2 on the road, better than any team in the country since 2022 outside Ryan Day and Ohio State.
Iowa fans want to compare this game to a 2017 win over the No. 6 Buckeyes, a 55-24 upset, but the Ducks can point to 2023, when Bo Nix and the Webfoots went into Rice-Eccles Stadium, another hostile environment, and choked off No. 13 Utah 35-6.
When this year's edition of the Hawkeyes played at Rutgers on September 19, they won 38-28 but Scarlet Knights quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis threw for 330 yards. When they beat Penn State at home 25-24 on October 18, the Nittany Lions, playing with reserve quarterback Ethan Grunkmeyer after Drew Allar was lost for the season, rushed for 173 yards on 46 carries.
Every game is different, and how this one unfolds is a script not yet written. That's the beauty of sports. "The most pivotal thing is us being able to win at the point of attack, dominate every play in and out and being tone setters," Ducks offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon said.
The Ducks understand the assignment. They know the weather will be cold, the stadium will be loud, and the locker room is pink. If they're able to shut all that out as they have before, they have more talent, more speed, and an offense with better balance and more weapons. Scheme only takes you so far.