The Iowa Hawkeyes moved up three spots to No. 18 in the ESPN Football Power Index after beating Northwestern 24-10 on the road on November 8, 2026, and their chances of reaching the College Football Playoff now sit at nearly 21 percent. The numbers, according to Sports Illustrated, show a team that keeps improving week after week instead of riding a lucky streak.
Kirk Ferentz's squad sits at 7-2 on the season after handling a 6-2 Northwestern team in Evanston. The win did more than pad the record. It pushed Iowa into a conversation that the national college football world can no longer avoid.
How the Hawkeyes got here
Iowa's rise has been steady rather than dramatic. The week before the Northwestern game, the Hawkeyes made the biggest jump of any team in the country, climbing 14 spots to No. 21, Yahoo Sports reported. This week's move to No. 18 was smaller, but it came with stronger underlying metrics.
The most notable change is in the projected win total. For the first time this season, the ESPN FPI projects Iowa to finish above the nine-win mark, with a projected record of 9.1-2.9. That is a significant milestone for a program that opened the year well outside the national discussion.
What the numbers say about Iowa's chances
ESPN's model now gives the Hawkeyes the following probabilities:
- Chance to win out: 31.5 percent
- Chance to make a bowl game: 100 percent
- Chance to win the Big Ten: 1.6 percent
- Chance to make the College Football Playoff: 20.9 percent
- Chance to make the national championship: 0.9 percent
- Chance to win the national championship: 0.3 percent
The one-in-three shot at running the table covers home games against Purdue, Illinois, and Nebraska to close the regular season. None of those are gimmes, but none are out of reach for a team playing this kind of football.
Winning without style points
Sports Illustrated's Riley Donald acknowledged that he is skeptical of ranking teams purely on metrics, noting that data-driven systems can carry biases based on human input. But he sees something meaningful in how Iowa's numbers are trending.