Iowa kicked off the 2025 season at Kinnick Stadium by starting slowly but by the second quarter the ground game took over powering the Hawkeyes to a 34-7 win over Albany 34-7. The rushing attack was led by Xavier Williams who scored one TD on 11 carries for 122 yards. The Hawkeyes offense sputtered early but caught fire after the Great Dance touchdown in the first quarter and ended up outgaining Albany 358-177 with 310 yards on the ground.
Williams is the first freshman since Shonn Greene to rush for 100 yards in a game and the most for a freshman Hawkeye since 1970.
Iowa got on the board first on the opening drive of the game, driving 55 yards over 13 plays before Stevens connected on a 28-yard field goal. Albany responded with a 68-yard, nine-play drive that ended with a nine-yard touchdown pass to the back of the end zone. In the second quarter Iowa answered with a 65-yard (60 via the rush), seven-play drive that culminated in a three-yard rushing touchdown by Williams.
Iowa scored once more with 1:51 remaining in the first half as Gronowski connected with Wetjen for a two-yard touchdown. The score capped a seven-play, 61-yard drive that lasting 2:49.
In the second half Iowa did all the scoring as the defense held Albany to 33 total yard in the second half. The Hawkeyes extended their lead with 5:27 left in the third quarter on a one-yard touchdown rush from Gronowski. Then with 14:18 left in the game, Stevens connected on a career-long 55-yard field goal to give Iowa a 20-point lead. With subs in the game a 12-play, 66-yard drive saw the Hawkeyes add an exclamation point with a one-yard quarterback sneak from quarterback Hank Brown with 3:42 remaining.
Hawkeye Head Coach was happy with the result at Kinnink Stadium. “To start out, just obviously good to get the win. Happy to get that done. I thought the players’ effort was good, and good to see them get rewarded for that. I thought the team had a really good camp, preseason camp, and I think some of the good things we saw tonight are probably the result of that, and then the flipside, too, is there’s always work to do, and I think certainly tonight we’ll have a lot of good teaching examples tomorrow to go off of and just some situations that we’re going to have to do a better job with.
Happy about that. It’s always good when you can get a win and do a lot of good things but also have a lot of things that are going to have to get corrected and try to get cleaned up a little bit. On a positive front, came out with two penalties, and I thought that was a pretty good start there. Almost got out of the game without a turnover and couldn’t quite get that done, so that was unfortunate, but for the most part clean, and certainly some highlights. You look at Drew with that great job with the field goal, and that thing still had some room to go. Rhys really did a nice job punting. Only had two punts but really — those were both impressive as well.
The bottom line, just good to be 1-0 right now. Going to enjoy tonight, I told the guys to do that, and then tomorrow we’ll go back to work. Sunday is all about taking a look at the tape and trying to take something out of it, and I think it’s every bit as important after a win as a loss.
Certainly a lot of things that we can get better at, and that’s going to be the focus as we move forward here this week. That’s kind of our plan right now.”
Iowa heads to Ames on Saturday to take on no. 22 ranked Iowa State in the Cy Hawk series. The game kicks off at 11:10 am and can be heard on Muscatine’s Choice for Music and Hawkeye Sports, MC 93.1. Sponsors of Hawkeye Football are Community Health Care Dental Clinic, Muscatine Power and Water and Ed Morse Chevy Buick GMC.
