Iowa City Today

The University of Iowa football team began its 2025 season with a 34-7 win over Albany on Saturday night at Kinnick Stadium. The Hawkeyes gained a total of 358 yards, including 310 rushing yards.

Freshman running back Xavier Williams led the team with 122 yards on 11 carries and scored a touchdown. Terrell Washington Jr. contributed 69 rushing yards, while Jaziun Patterson added 47. Quarterbacks Mark Gronowski and Hank Brown each recorded a rushing touchdown.

“I was super excited for the game out there,” Williams said. “I wanted to play well, so I was just happy to get a little spark going for our offense so we can keep things rolling. All camp long the offensive line has been putting in a bunch of work, and it showed tonight. There were open holes all day long, so it was good all around.”

Gronowski completed eight passes out of fifteen attempts for 44 yards and threw one touchdown pass to Kaden Wetjen. Brown completed his only passing attempt for four yards.

On defense, TJ Hall and Zach Lutmer made five tackles each, while Max Llewellyn and Aaron Graves both recorded sacks.

Kicker Drew Stevens was successful on both field goal attempts, making kicks from 28 and 55 yards. He also converted all four extra point attempts.

Head coach Kirk Ferentz commented after the game: "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.

Then on the other front, a lot of young guys played that haven't played much football, and start with Xavier, the most obvious one. He went in there and played like a veteran guy, which was good to see. Didn't look out of place at all and did a good job.

Terrell is not a new guy but didn't play running back very much for us last year, and I think he looked really comfortable back there.

Jaz looked like Jaz and stepped in, did a great job. Positionally a lot of guys that really haven't played much football that got their feet wet. Got three senior linebackers but none of them ever started.

Just a lot of that stuff across the board, and happy about that.

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 opened scoring with an early field goal before Albany responded with their only touchdown drive in the first quarter. Williams’ three-yard touchdown run put Iowa ahead again before Gronowski connected with Wetjen for another score late in the second quarter.

In addition to Williams’ performance marking his first career 100-yard game—and making him Iowa’s first freshman since Shonn Greene in 2005 to achieve this milestone—the Hawkeyes saw several players reach career marks during this contest:

- Gronowski reached his first rushing touchdown as an Iowa player.

- Brown scored his first career rushing touchdown.

- Stevens moved into third place on Iowa’s all-time field goals list after converting his career-long 55-yarder.

- Preston Ries blocked an Albany punt—the program’s first blocked punt since Yahya Black accomplished it against Northwestern in 2023.

- Nine Hawkeyes made their first career starts against Albany across offense and defense positions.

Iowa held Albany under 200 total offensive yards—something they accomplished twice during their previous season—and limited Albany’s offense even further in the second half by allowing only 33 yards after halftime.

Next week Iowa will travel for its annual Cy-Hawk Series matchup against Iowa State on September 6th; kickoff is scheduled for 11:00 AM Central Time on FOX.