Iowa went to Seattle on Friday night as a three-point underdog, started its backup quarterback and won 41-24. The Hawkeyes are 5-1 and 2-1 in the Big Ten. Washington is 3-3 and 0-3 in conference play.
The rushing margin was 263 to minus-3. Not a typo. Washington finished the night with negative rushing yards at home.
How It Got Away So Fast
Iowa opened on a 27-0 run and led 27-3. Kamari Moulton ran for a career-best 208 yards and two touchdowns, having entered the game with 50 carries for 311 yards on the season. Jeremy Hecklinski, starting for an injured Hank Brown, threw for 202 yards and three touchdowns.
Brown was listed questionable with a sprained AC joint and had been honest about it pregame: “I’d say there’s definitely still a little bit of a question, for sure.” Hecklinski came in with 18 completions on 32 attempts for 208 yards, one touchdown and one interception for the whole season. He matched his season touchdown total plus two in one night.
Washington Lost Its Quarterback and Maybe Found Another One
Demond Williams Jr. went to the medical tent late in the first half after a big hit on a scramble, favoring his left shoulder area. The broadcast cited a side and rib injury. He returned to the sideline, then went to the locker room before halftime and was still not back in the fourth quarter. He was 6-of-11 for 69 yards when he left.
Williams had entered the game with 110 completions on 163 attempts for 1,327 yards, eight touchdowns and three interceptions, plus 53 carries for 191 yards and two scores, second on the roster in rushing. Jedd Fisch said after the game that Williams had not been formally ruled out and the staff was awaiting X-ray results, so the actual diagnosis is unknown.
Elijah Brown, a transfer from Stanford, replaced him and completed 19 of his first 22 passes for 156 yards and two touchdowns. At Stanford in 2025 he completed 58.3 percent of his throws for 829 yards and four scores. He just put up a relief performance that creates a real conversation in Seattle regardless of what the X-rays say.
Iowa Is the Quietest 5-1 Team in America
Nobody is talking about the Hawkeyes and that is the point. They won a road night game at a Big Ten contender with a backup quarterback and a running back nobody outside Iowa City had heard of two weeks ago.
Negative three rushing yards allowed is not a statistical oddity, it is a statement about which team wanted to play physical football in October. Iowa has been doing this for twenty years and the sport keeps acting surprised.
Where Washington Goes
Three straight conference losses with a quarterback question and a coach whose summary of the season was already painful: “They’re tough to go to sleep at night thinking about what could have been,” Fisch said of the close losses. Friday was not close.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.