Oregon survives game of inches with ugly (and important) win at Iowa

It was not pretty for the No. 9 Oregon Ducks, but they did what they needed to do to scratch and claw their way to an 18-16 win over No. 20 Iowa at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday. 

It was huge for the Ducks for a number of reasons, with the most important being it's a road Big Ten win against a top-25 team to keep them in the fight for conference title and a potential College Football Playoff spot.

They needed this game. Badly. 

It was also big because they showed they are capable of winning in bad weather, in a tough environment and grinding out the type of tough wins that Big Ten football is known for. They also did it with a banged-up wide receiver corps that severely limited their passing game. 

Quarterback Dante Moore led a game-winning field goal drive that was capped off by a 39-yard Atticus Sappington field goal in the closing seconds. 

That field goal may have been the winning points, but this was a game of inches that changed multiple times throughout.

Iowa had two plays that produced a four-point swing

The Hawkeyes might be sick when they think about how close they were to a very different result.

The scoring opened with an Oregon safety, when a bad snap on an Iowa punt rolled more than 25 yards into the end zone before it was finally knocked out of bounds.

In a game decided by two points, that is a game-changing play.

The other big play came after Iowa scored a go-ahead touchdown with under two minutes to play to take a 16-15 lead. The Hawkeyes went for two to make it a three-point game, and initially appeared to convert on a fluke play.

But replay review showed that Kamari Moulton was out out of bounds by a matter of inches.