Down in Nashville, Mizzou lost a game but found a quarterback.
Oh, true freshman Matt Zollers has been there all along in 2025. Missouri didn’t find him in the stands, selling popcorn.
But when MZ took over the MIZ offense, this inexperienced lad of 19 years old was poised and bold and didn’t scare. Pressure? What pressure? He didn’t care. He kept slinging, and the Tigers kept moving. He enlivened an uninspiring passing attack.
Zollers not only stuck some sharp arrows in the gut of the Vanderbilt defense, but he nudged Mizzou offensive coordinator Kirby Moore out of a trance … or whatever state of mind a coach slips into when he’s calling a terrible game.
Zollers replaced injured Mizzou starter Beau Pribula in the third quarter … and suddenly … Mizzou had a passing game with the ball getting fired downfield to real wide receivers and everything. They ran routes. The ball was delivered. They did it again. And again.
This was a lot more entertaining than the usual helter-skelter fire drill that was the best MIZ could do to present a passing game.
Pribula is a live-wire competitor, worthy of respect. But to be honest, I craved seeing a straight-up, straight-line passing game. This running around in circles – with no particular place to go with the ball on too many plays – was baffling. So much wasted energy, so much wasted motion, so many talented Mizzou receivers getting lost in the circus.
Zollers looked like a helluva quarterback. He didn’t quite pull off the upset – Vanderbilt held this fearless kid off by a couple of inches on the game’s final throw and exhaled for a 17-10 victory.
With the loss, Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz is now 2-10 against ranked teams in true road games, and that includes the 0-5 goose egg against Top 10 teams.
Overall at Mizzou, Coach Drink is 7-16 against ranked opponents and 1-8 vs. Top 10 teams. The one victory was over a stripped-down Ohio State roster in the 2023 Cotton Bowl.
I have no idea if Drinkwitz will leave if the right program makes him an offer. But if Drink goes, he’d better leave Zollers in CoMo for the next Mizzou head coach. And the money people had better sweeten Zoller’s NIL deal.
Matt Zollers was the best quarterback on the field Saturday in Nashville.
Yeah, I just typed that sentence.
Listen, Diego Pavia may have already awarded the Heisman Trophy to himself, and the ESPN frontrunners squirm in ecstasy whenever he runs for 3 yards or something – but Matthew Thomas Zollers was the most effective quarterback on display at FirstBank Stadium. Period.
Why do I dare speak such blasphemy?
Well, as usual, I go with the facts.
Passer efficiency rating: Zollers 125.6, Pribula 105.1, Pavia 99.1.
Adjusted passer rating: Zollers 92.3, Pribula 75.9, Pavia 52.3.
The proprietary Sports Info Solutions passer rating: Zollers 93.0, Pribula 88.4, Pavia 48.4.
Expected Points Added, or EPA: Zollers +8.65, Pribula negative 3.96, Pavia negative 6.29.
Adjusted yards per passing attempt: Zollers 6.3 yards, Pribula 4.9 yards, Pavia 3.7 yards.
Boom-play percentage; it’s more impactful than a successful play: Zollers 25 percent, Pavia 14.3%, Pribula 14.3%.
Bust-play percentage. Bad plays. The lower the better: Zollers 12.5 percent, Pribula 21.4%, Pavia 23.8%.
Average depth of throw: Zollers 10%, Pavia 9.6%, Pribula 5.4%.
The average depth of the throw is a revealing stat. With all due respect to Pribula, he doesn’t have the arm fuel to rocket passes downfield. That isn’t a problem for Zollers.
Another outstanding aspect of Zollers’ day was his clutch work on third and fourth down when Mizzou needed a successful play.
Check out these numbers: 7 completions in 8 attempts, 85 yards, a touchdown, a catchable-ball rate of 85.7 percent, 13.1 adjusted passing yards per attempt, and a 138 passer rating from Sports Info Solutions.
Zollers’ work on third-fourth down passing was notable for another reason: Pribula struggled in this area when facing power-conference competition: 55 percent completion rate, an adjusted 4.3 yards per passing attempt, four touchdowns and four interceptions, and a Sports Info Solutions passer rating of 68.5.
On third-fourth downs against MIZ, Pavia was 2 for 4 for 22 yards. Overall Pavia mustered just 129 yards passing – and threw an interception – against a swarming Mizzou defense that also closed off his scrambling lanes.
After Vandy’s triumph over Mizzou, Pavia – held to 129 combined yards from scrimmage – was asked if he believes that he deserves to win the Heisman Trophy.
"Hell yeah, I believe it,” he said.
And you just have to love that humility.
Among 27 Power conference quarterbacks that attempted at least 15 passes in a road game during Week 9, Zollers ranked 11th in Sports Info Solutions passer rating.
That put MU’s new starter ahead of Ty Simpson (Alabama), Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss), Luke Altmyer (Illinois), Marcell Reed (Texas A&M, Bryce Underwood (Michigan) and Kevin Jennings (SMU.)
Pribula led the Tigers for six drives Saturday before dislocating his ankle. He’ll miss the remainder of the season.
In Pribula’s six drives, Missouri punted four times and another drive ended on a failed fourth and goal. (He was injured on that play.) Missouri gained 150 yards on 35 plays with Pribula directing the offense. He had only four yards passing in the first quarter which set the tone for the day.
Well, at least until Matt Zollers took command. In his four drives, Zollers led Missouri to 206 yards in 45 plays and threw a touchdown pass for MU’s biggest play of the game. Zollers and running back Jamal Roberts had some brief confusion on an RPO mesh, and Vanderbilt intervened to cause a fumble that led to the home team’s winning touchdown.
The Zollers-guided offense should have had three other points but freshman kicker Robert Meyer missed a 29-yard field goal attempt.
Mizzou should have won this game. The Tigers had 111 more yards from scrimmage than Vandy, had more passing yards than Vandy, had more rushing yards than Vandy, ran 33 plays more than Vandy, and had nearly a 12-minute advantage in possession time. Zollers and the Mizzou defense did their part. MIZ’s red-zone failures were pathetic. No one on the offensive side of the coaching staff can come up with one creative play down near the goal line? It was sad.
OK, now it is time for me to state the obvious: this was just one game for Zoller. An impressive performance, for sure, especially under the circumstances.
Still, it’s just one game. But Drinkwitz saw enough to declare: "Make no mistake about it, Matt Zollers is the future of the QB position here."
Mizzou plays No. 3 Texas A&M in CoMo a week from Saturday, and Aggies coach Mike Elko has an extra week to come up with a devious plan to confuse and fluster the true-freshman quarterback. And that will also be the situation for Zollers in the games against Mississippi State, Oklahoma (especially) and Arkansas.
But as QB1, Zollers will get the practice reps and extra preparation he needs to be ready for the tests ahead. I decline to talk about Mizzou’s playoff chances because it’s silly to handicap their three remaining SEC games at one time. Let’s see what happens against Texas A&M and go from there.
It was a frustrating loss for Mizzou in Nashville, but the Tigers came out of it with a quarterback capable of elevating a sluggish offense with his obvious ability to plant and throw downfield.
This element has been missing, and I’m excited to see what Zollers can do with his unexpected opportunity. MZ for MIZ.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
Bernie’s all-time favorite tweet from a follower? “Bernie, been reading you a long time,” from Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine. (He’s a Rams fan and followed the team closely during their St. Louis years.)
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. During the baseball season Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast on the Cardinals with his longtime pal Will Leitch. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STLSportsCentral featuring Bernie and Randy Karraker.