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Iowa football 2025 early opponent preview: Oregon
Reigning Big Ten champions will be relatively young in 2025, but still have talent to potentially be top-10 team
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Editor’s note: Ninth in a 12-part series previewing each of Iowa football’s 2025 regular-season opponents.
IOWA CITY — Oregon football has been almost perfect recently in the regular season.
The Ducks went 12-0 in the regular season last year (and won the Big Ten championship game before losing to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl/CFP quarterfinals). All but three of those wins were by at least 20-point margins.
The year before that, Oregon went 11-1 in the regular season. The one loss was a narrow 36-33 result to eventual national runner-up Washington. Oregon’s last season with more than three regular-season losses was back in 2018 in then-coach Mario Cristobal’s first season.
Looking ahead to 2025, Oregon is expected to be a similarly daunting foe when the Ducks come to Kinnick Stadium on Nov. 8.
Oregon was No. 7 in ESPN’s post-spring 2025 SP+ rankings. Athlon Sports has forecast the Ducks to be the No. 9 team in the country. If the Ducks indeed turn those preseason rankings into an in-season reality, it will be with a group that looks substantially different from last year’s Big Ten championship team.
Dante Moore steps into Oregon’s starting quarterback role after backing up first-team All-American Dillon Gabriel in 2024. The former five-star recruit began his career at UCLA in 2023 before transferring to Oregon. He started five games as a true freshman with the Bruins and completed 53.5 percent of his passes with 11 touchdowns versus nine interceptions.
Moore, who played sparingly in his first season with the Ducks, is far from the only relatively new face who could have a significant role on Oregon’s 2025 offense. The only returning starters from last year’s Big Ten championship team are wide receiver Evan Stewart and center Iapani Laloulu.
Significant portal additions on the offensive side include former Tulane running back Makhi Hughes, former Nevada offensive lineman Isaiah World and former USC offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon.
Linebacker Bryce Boettcher is back in 2025 after finishing 2024 with a team-high 94 total tackles and an also-respectable eight tackles for loss in 2024. Fellow linebacker Matayo Uiagalelei will be another returner to watch after he had a team-high 10.5 sacks and earned all-Big Ten first-team honors.
The defense lost all five starters from last year’s secondary, but the unit added former Purdue safety Dillon Thieneman and former Northwestern cornerback Theran Johnson via the transfer portal. Thieneman was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2023.
Iowa vs. Oregon: 3 things to watch
- Who wins at the line of scrimmage? As much as Oregon has a reputation for its extremely athletic players at skill positions, the Ducks have plenty of strength at the line of scrimmage. The average weight of offensive linemen that The Oregonian projects to be starters is about 315 pounds.
- Does Iowa’s defense force some turnovers? In Iowa’s last win over a top-10 foe — the 2021 win over then-No. 4 Penn State — the Hawkeyes forced four turnovers. Even then, Iowa only netted a 23-20 win. While that 2021 game is far from a perfect parallel to this 2025 matchup, Iowa’s path to victory could get much more realistic with a couple turnovers forced.
- How much of a vertical passing threat do the Hawkeyes present? Oregon’s new-look secondary will have plenty of time to jell by this Week 10 matchup, but any big-play opportunity that Mark Gronowski and Co. can find in the passing game could be crucial.
2025 prognosis
Even with Oregon’s relative youth, almost everything will have to go right for the Hawkeyes to be competitive with the Ducks — a team with only one regular-season loss in the last two seasons combined.
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