Good luck to any person in the state of Iowa who opens X or Facebook this week. 

If you're looking to see what an old friend is up to or simply looking for a morning news headline, don't bother. 

It's officially Cy-Hawk game week in the Hawkeye State, which means the term "Iowa Nice" will hide in a back room for a week. The closest of friends will become enemies, and the trash talk on social media is almost more exciting than the actual football game itself. 

This is the most hyped-up sporting event this great state has to offer, but it hasn't been to kind to Iowa football in recent years. Iowa State has won three of the last four meetings in the series, including the last two at Kinnick Stadium, where the 2026 edition will take place. 

We'll have plenty of further analysis on HawkeyeRoundtable.com throughout the week, but it's time to kick off a fun week of coverage with our three and a half thoughts on this intringuing rivalry clash. 

Hank Brown outplayed Jeremy Hecklinski on Saturday, but was his performance enough to convince Kirk Ferentz that he should be the full-time starter for this game? Based on Ferentz's comments, I'm going to make an early prediction and say that the Hawkeyes will continue to employ the two-man rotation yet again. That could always change, though. 

Brown would likely open the game again, but it's possible Ferentz keeps him in the contest if he and the offense move the football as well as they did against Northern Illinois (three touchdowns on Brown's first three possessions). If Brown doesn't have it, then you could make a change, but if he's slinging the rock, there's no reason to remove him from the game and risk disrupting the offensive rhythm. 

NOTE: Iowa's depth chart came out after this article's publication. There's again an OR between Brown and Hecklinski's name on the depth chart. We'll find out more information from Ferentz on Tuesday. 

New Iowa State head coach Jimmy Rogers is a defensive guru through and through. Iowa fans don't like to remember the ugly 7-3 victory over South Dakota State in 2022, but I'm circling back to it because Rogers was SDSU's defensive coordinator that day. This is obviously a different Hawkeye offense, but Rogers' strong 4-3 defense (sometimes 4-2-5 as well) has been a staple of his football teams during his career, and the Cyclones responded by holding Southeast Missouri State to 10 points last weekend. 

Iowa State is going to try to ugly this game up if it can. 

Leading the Iowa State offense is quarterback Jaylen Raynor. The Arkansas State transfer didn't blow anyone away against SEMO, but one thing Iowa should watch out for is his mobility. Mobile quarterbacks have long been the Achilles' heel for Phil Parker-coached defenses, and Raynor can definitely beat you with his rushing ability. That's probably going to be the key for the Cyclone offense to stay in this game, so the Hawkeyes will need to generate pressure to keep them at bay.

This will be the first primetime Cy-Hawk game at Kinnick Stadium in a decade, and it's safe to say Hawkeye fans will be primed and ready to go for this one. The 2016 crowd was electric, but alcohol wasn't sold in the stadium back then. People will have all day to enjoy themselves at their tailgates before entering the stadium, making this one of the more electric atmospheres in recent Cy-Hawk history. 

Iowa State is entering a hornet's nest on Saturday. 

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HawkeyeRoundtable publisher Brad Schultz has covered the Iowa Hawkeyes since 2023. To send him story ideas, scoops, or criticize his writing, reach him at [email protected]