Mizzou Football Position Preview: Quarterbacks

Missouri's quarterback play in 2025 was a rollercoaster for the ages. After three stable seasons with Brady Cook as the full-time starter, the team was forced to pivot in 2025, and it was far from a smooth transition.

Missouri grabbed Beau Pribula — who had never started a game despite entering his fourth year of college football — to be the starting quarterback. Sam Horn, a former four-star prospect who was fresh off Tommy John surgery and had also never started a game, challenged Pribula for the starting job but suffered a season-ending injury on his first play of the season. Pribula's play was up-and-down, and he, too, suffered an injury, leaving true freshman Matt Zollers to take the wheel and start for two games in Southeastern Conference play. And, believe it or not, the season ended with former walk-on, mid-season addition, fourth-string quarterback Brett Brown nearly completing a game-winning hail mary as the clock struck zero in the Gator Bowl.

That's quite the harsh transition out of the Cook Era.

Although it's hard to predict the future, the quarterback situation for 2026 seems to be much more clear-cut, set for stability and overall more promising than it did in 2025. Here's everything to know about Missouri's new group of signal-callers.

Projected Depth Chart

Starter: Austin Simmons (named QB1 following spring ball)

Backups: Matt Zollers, Nick Evers

Depth: Gavin Sidwar, Brett Brown

Players lost: Beau Pribula (starter), Sam Horn, Tommy Lock

The Coach

Garrett Riley has taken over as Missouri's quarterbacks coach, reuniting with head coach Eli Drinkwitz for the first time since the pairs' days at Appalachian State in 2019. Riley took over the job for former quarterbacks coach Sean Gleeson, who served in the role in the 2024 and 2025 seasons before becoming Kansas State's offensive coordinator this past offseason.

Riley most recently served as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Clemson from 2023-2025, helping quarterback Cade Clubnik throw for 71 touchdowns and 9,426 yards en route to being selected by the New York Jets in the fourth round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Before Riley's time with Clemson, he served in the same two roles with TCU in 2022 — when the Hornfrogs reached the National Championship and Max Duggan threw for 3,698 yards and 36 touchdowns while finishing as the Heisman runner-up — and with SMU in 2020 and 2021 — when Tanner Mordecai threw for 3,628 yards and 38 touchdowns in the latter.

Riley has also served stints as an offensive assistant with Appalachian State, Kansas, East Carolina, Augustana, Roosevelt High School and Tennessee-Martin.

Drinkwitz believes that Riley and offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey provide creativity needed to help Simmons thrive.

"The thing that has been really cool to watch on the offensive side of the ball, we have a lot of flexibility in scheme," Drinkwitz said. "It's about we can take this concept and this concept and marry it to what Austin really likes. I think that's what great coaches do.”

The Starter

Sep 27, 2025; Oxford, Mississippi, USA; Mississippi Rebels quarterback Austin Simmons (13) passes the ball during warm ups prior to the game against the LSU Tigers at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Petre Thomas-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Last season, Drinkwitz and Missouri allowed a quarterback battle to play out all the way into the regular season, as Pribula and Horn were set to split snaps in Missouri's Week 1 contest against Central Arkansas.

Drinkwitz believes the delay in naming a starter was one of the major faults of last season.

"I think one of the things that I went back and looked at where last year didn't go the way we wanted it to was the error in not naming a starting quarterback soon enough and allowing leadership to take hold within our team," Drinkwitz said.

The quarterback battle was wrapped up by the end of spring practice in 2026, as Missouri named Ole Miss transfer Austin Simmons as QB1 back in March. Simmons is 20 years old but is entering his fourth season of college football, having spent the first three seasons of his career at with the Rebels. He backed up Jaxson Dart in 2023 and 2024, learning the ropes on an Ole Miss team surging through the ranks of the SEC. When the 2025 season came around, Simmons, the former lefty four-star prospect, was given the nod as the starter.

He completed 20 of his 31 passes for 341 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions in a 63-7 Week 1 beatdown against Georgia State — a fine first start of his career. Then, against Kentucky the following week, Simmons was just 13-for-24 with no touchdowns and two interceptions when he suffered a left ankle injury that sidelined him for the rest of the game. Unfortunately for Simmons, that opened the door for Trinidad Chambliss to step in, who took the starting job and never looked back, racking up 30 total touchdowns and nearly 3,500 total yards while leading the Rebels to the CFP Semifinal.

Simmons then transferred to Missouri and is now once again projected to start for a competitive SEC squad. The 6-foot-4, 215-pound lefty brings a new sense of explosiveness and high-ceiling to Missouri's passing attack that severely lacked both traits in 2025.

He's made a quick impression on Drinkwitz throughout the offseason, with the third-year signal-caller's intelligence and communication standing out.

“Anytime you have that intelligence factor that you can make same-as comparisons, it helps you retain information quickly," Drinkwitz said. "I think he has a photographic memory, which is usually high sense of intelligence. I think part of that intelligence gets him in trouble a little bit because he's met his match as far as intelligence. There's some things that he can't get away with that maybe he got away with before.

"But I think that's good. Challenging each other is a way to grow. I'm very excited. I think the best thing about Austin is his communication skills. He can communicate at a high level about what he's seeing, what he understands, how routes are similar to what he's done in the past that he really liked. That's accelerated the growth between Coach Lindsey, Coach Riley and what we're doing."

The Backups

Returning freshman Matt Zollers — who started three games in 2025 — and UConn senior transfer Nick Evers will compete for the backup job.

Zollers, a four-star true freshman in 2025, was unexpectedly thrust onto the gridiron and made relatively-drinkable lemonade out of a batch of rotten lemons, throwing for 503 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions on the season.

Evers attempted just 15 passes in 2025, completing 10 of them for 105 yards and one touchdown, playing sparingly after losing his starting job halfway through the 2024 season to Joe Fagnano. In 2024, Evers threw for five touchdowns, five interceptions and 918 yards. The journeyman now lands at Missouri for his final season of college ball, having spent the 2022 season at Oklahoma and 2023 season at Wisconsin.

Both Zollers and Evers have cases to win the QB2 job — Evers for his veteran experience, and Zollers for his youth and potential. Missouri could also opt to presever Zollers' redshirt and let him develop for the season, using Evers as the spot-snap backup instead.

Not yet mentioned is three-star true freshman Gavin Sidwar, who's set to begin his first season of college football. It'd be quite the shock for Sidwar to see any meaningful action this season, but he's certainly in Missouri's plans for the future.

Biggest Question for Fall Camp: How Good is Austin Simmons?

Bland question, sure, but it's what matters most at the end of the day. The ceiling of Missouri's offense largely hinges on how good Simmons can be, and how much he can change the passing dynamic from the absurdly-limited version we saw in 2025, that allowed defenses to load the box and ignore the Tiger passing attack entirely.

The Final Word

Drinkwitz had high praise for Simmons at SEC media days, praising his ability to learn quick, communicate effectively and gel with his coaches.

Austin has been a tremendous addition to our football team," Drinkwitz said. "I love the way he's gone about his business, embracing his role as a leader of our team and a quarterback. I think his combination of Garrett Riley and Chip Lindsey are really going to be good."

Sign up for our free newsletter and follow us on Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for the latest news.

Add us as a preferred source on Google