It's bird v. bird as the Ducks fly to the Central Standard Zone to take on some Hawkeyes.
Oregon is back on the football field this afternoon after their second bye week. Dante Moore had an extra week to recuperate from whatever happened to his nose, and the squad as a whole had an extra to gameplan for another tough and gritty defensive-minded Big Ten (capital B, capital T!) team. Are they prepared for a Big Noon Kickoff appearance? The game isn't actually at noon in any time zone, but FOX's big pregame show that isn't quite College Gameday is setting up shop early at the Iowa campus even though they aren't actually broadcasting the game.
As with the previous season's meeting, the Wisconsin game was a slog and not very fun to watch for most of the game. The weather conditions certainly didn't help, but when it finally looked like Oregon was looking like themselves, Moore ended up heading towards the sidelines with an unhealthy amount of blood gushing from his face. Fortunately, it sounded like his removal was more of a precautionary thing as the Badgers really hadn't put up much of an offensive threat at that point, with QB1 ceding even more minutes to the walk-on Brock Thomas. Thomas was a perfect 4/4 on the night and tossed his first TD pass as the Ducks were able to keep their opponents at arm's length.
Were it not, perhaps, for an early season loss to Iowa State and a relatively tame schedule, the Hawkeyes would be entering this game with some sort of ranking today. As it is, this team is another defensive stalwart that lost to consensus #2 Indiana by only 5 points, a better showing than Oregon had against the Hoosiers this season. Iowa is led by quarterback Mark Gronowski, who transferred from South Dakota State for his senior season after winning two FCS championships with the Jackrabbits.
Notes and miscellany:
- There's been some weird negative vibes in the Ducks fanbase this year since the Indiana loss, which doesn't make a ton of sense to me. It's true that for most of the first half of the Wisconsin game, I hadn't seen Oregon look that poor in decades, but I kind of prefer a tough loss in the regular season schedule to the team going straight into the playoffs unblemished like last season. There's always a chance this ends up going south on them with some pretty big challenges left in November, but I think it's probably been a good experience for a lot of the younger Ducks (and Moore in particular) to experience some adversity.
- Opponent fun fact: You can pick up a nice slab of Iowa football on vinyl as the 1950s era was documented on a record called "Hooray for the Hawkeyes".
- Opponent history: The Ducks hold a 2-1 edge over Iowa, but they have not met on the football field in 31 years.
- Game time is 12:30 PM PST on CBS in Iowa City. Go Ducks!
