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Former Iowa Hawkeyes Star Receives Urgent Take About 2025 NFL Season

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Former Iowa Hawkeyes Star Receives Urgent Take About 2025 NFL Season


Former Iowa Hawkeyes star edge defender Lukas Van Ness needs a huge season with the Green Bay Packers. Pro Football Focus recently highlighted one player from all 32 franchises facing a make-or-break season in 2025, and the Packers’ former first-round selection was an unfortunate, obvious choice.

In two seasons, Van Ness has totalled just seven sacks, equalling his output as a freshman at Iowa. For context, only Cincinnati’s Myles Murphy and Kansas City’s Felix Anudike-Uzomah have fewer sacks as first-round edge rushers from the 2023 NFL Draft, and both of them have played significantly fewer snaps than Van Ness, who has lined up for Green Bay’s defense 793 times.

Often times poor sack numbers can be overlooked if the quarterback pressures and hits are there, but that hasn’t been the case for the former Hawkeye either. According to PFF, Van Ness recorded 20 pressures, 13 hurries, and three hits on 247 pass rush snaps. While the snap count ranked 78th in the league at the position, the pressures, hurries, and hits ranked in the mid-to-low 80s. Nonetheless, Van Ness does carry an average pass rush grade from PFF from last year at 65.5.

His rushing grade is much worse, however. PFF graded his run defense at 45.2, which ranked 193rd out of 211 edge rushers.

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Van Ness isn’t alone, as the Packers have struggled on the defensive front collectively, ranking 28th in PFF’s pass rushing grades without blitzing. No Packer had more than eight sacks last season as veteran Rashan Gary logged just 7.5.

Van Ness is entering his third year in the NFL, so the clock isn’t up for him just yet, but another lackluster year could have the Packers looking for a replacement in the 2026 NFL Draft. Still, the Packers don’t drop their young players in the deep end often. After all, Gary has become a stalwart on that defense, and he opened the first two seasons of his career with seven sacks as well before logging nine in Year 3. Green Bay is hoping to see similar results from Van Ness in 2025.



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Check the Powerball numbers. 28,000 Iowa Lottery tickets won prizes.

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Check the Powerball numbers. 28,000 Iowa Lottery tickets won prizes.


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The Powerball Jackpot keeps getting bigger. No one was the winner on Wednesday, Dec. 17, which means $1.5 billion is now up for grabs.

This is now the fifth-largest jackpot in the game’s history.

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How many Iowa Lottery tickets won prizes in latest Powerball drawing?

Iowa Lottery players won 28,677 prizes in Wednesday’s drawing, and this time, no one got close to winning the grand prize. Prizes ranged from $4 to $400.

What were the winning Powerball numbers in Wednesday’s drawing?

The winning numbers in Wednesday’s drawing were 25-33-53-62-66 and Powerball 17. The Power Playmultiplier was 4.

When is the next Powerball drawing?

The next Powerball drawing will be on Saturday, Dec. 20. The game has drawings on Mondays, Wednesday and Saturdays each week.

The Powerball jackpot has been growing since early September, and Saturday’s drawing will mark the 45th in the current jackpot run, a record for most drawings in a single jackpot cycle, according to the news release.

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How many Iowa Lottery Powerball tickets were sold?

Iowa Lottery players bought nearly $1.75 million in Powerball tickets for last night’s drawing, including $1.24 million in tickets on Wednesday alone. But the average Powerball purchase in Iowa for Wednesday’s drawing remained around $6, or about three plays per ticket.

Lucia Cheng is a service and trending reporter at the Des Moines Register. Contact her at lcheng@gannett.com or 515-284-8132.



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Arizona baseball to hire Iowa’s Sean Kenny as pitching coach

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Arizona baseball to hire Iowa’s Sean Kenny as pitching coach


Arizona got caught up in the swirl of college baseball coaches leaving for professional jobs this offseason, losing pitching coach John DeRouin to a coordinator position with the New York Mets organization. But the Wildcats didn’t take long finding a replacement, one with a strong pedigree in the collegiate ranks.

Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com is reporting the UA will hire Iowa’s Sean Kenny as pitching coach. Kenny will techincally be Arizona’s fourth pitching coach in five seasons under Chip Hale, though DeRouin only served in that role during the offseason following Kevin Vance’s departure in June to become San Diego State’s head coach.

Kenny, 53, spent the 2025 season at Iowa where his staff ranked 16th in the country in ERA and 11th in strikeouts per nine innings. The Hawkeyes went 33-22-1 but missed the NCAA Tournament.

Prior to Iowa, Kenny spent the 2023 season at Iowa and before that was at Georgia from 2018-23. He’s also coached at Michigan, Maryland, Pepperdine and San Diego. The 2026 season will be his 30th in college baseball.

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Arizona, which is coming off a trip to the College World Series, returns weekend starters Owen Kramkowski and Smith Bailey and NCBWA Stopper of the Year Tony Pluta among several other pitchers from the team that went 44-21.

The UA opens the 2026 season on Feb. 13 in Surprise against former Pac-12 foe Stanford, part of a tournament that also includes Oregon State and Michigan. The home opener is Feb. 17 vs. Omaha at Hi Corbett Field.



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Watch live as bodies of Iowa National Guard soldiers return to US

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Watch live as bodies of Iowa National Guard soldiers return to US


President Donald Trump, Gov. Kim Reynolds, members of Iowa’s congressional delegation and families are receiving the bodies of fallen Iowa National Guard soldiers Sgt. William Nathaniel “Nate” Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, and Sgt. Edgar Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines and a civilian interpreter, Ayad Mansoor Sakat, of Michigan.

The dignified transfer ceremony is expected to happen this afternoon at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

All three were killed Saturday, Dec. 13, by an attacker who targeted a convoy of American and Syrian forces in Palmyra, Syria, before being shot dead.

Their caskets will be transferred from the plane to an awaiting vehicle and taken to the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations building at the Dover base “for positive identification by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System and preparation for their final resting place.”

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