������Ƶ

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Fall camp No. 6 of Eli Drinkwitz’s Missouri tenure began Sunday like most of his past preseasons have. Players moved into the MU dorm rooms where they’ll bunk for the start of camp practices, and the Tigers’ coach talked about his quarterback battle.

This is the fourth season in which Mizzou will hold a quarterback competition during the preseason, joining the run-ups to the 2020, 2022 and 2023 campaigns. This one, it seems, is down to returner Sam Horn and Penn State transfer Beau Pribula.

Unless it isn’t.

In his camp-opening remarks to reporters Sunday afternoon, Drinkwitz opened up the possibility of the quarterback competition expanding to include true freshman Matt Zollers.

“Sam and Beau really separated themselves in the spring, in the summer,” Drinkwitz said. “I think those two guys will get the lion’s share of the (first-team reps). But I don’t necessarily think Matt’s out of it just yet. He’s going to have to really come in and come on in fall camp, but that’s not been unheard of.”

Zollers certainly has long odds of winning the job. He was a four-star recruit at Spring-Ford High School in Royersford, Pennsylvania, and the coaching staff has seen even more potential in the young quarterback since he came to campus ahead of spring workouts.

There’s no concern about Zollers’ health following a gruesome leg injury that ended his high school career, but he’s still a true freshman. Maybe he gets into a game or two for a bit of experience this season, but it seems quite unlikely he’d beat out two more experienced signal-callers — even if Horn and Pribula haven’t played a whole lot of college football, either.

Drinkwitz also didn’t rule out the possibility of the quarterback competition extending into the season, if needed. There’s “no timetable,” he again made clear.

“When the quarterback’s ready, he’ll show himself to the team,” Drinkwitz said. “I think we’ll all know who it is, and when that is, I’ll tell you. I don’t plan on waiting to announce because of a perceived advantage. Neither one of them played that much football, so there’s not going to be any(thing) to scout — it’s not going to help (Central Arkansas) one way or the other. And if it’s undecided, then we’ll let it go into the games and play as long as we need to.”

His use of “neither” instead of “none” perhaps betrays the reality that the competition is a two-man race between Horn and Pribula with Zollers in waiting, but that’s not the most relevant point there.

In 2023, the last time the Tigers staged a quarterback competition, it extended into the season opener, in which Horn and eventual starter Brady Cook each played a half of a comfortable win against South Dakota.

Opening against Central Arkansas ought to provide the same kind of gentle on-ramp, if needed. And Drinkwitz clearly isn’t too preoccupied right now with whether that’ll be necessary.

As far the barometer for finding the starting quarterback goes, Drinkwitz said it’s not purely a matter of who completes more passes, throws more touchdowns or tosses fewer interceptions.

“It’s not going to be as much about stats as it is about who consistently leads their team,” he said.

Continuity, change both apparent

Depending where you look, there’s both clear continuity and undeniable newness within the Missouri team facility. All but two of last season’s position coaches are still on staff. Coordinators Kirby Moore and Corey Batoon are back for their third and second seasons, respectively. Both the offensive and defensive line feature key returners.

Yet there’s quite a bit of change, too. Drinkwitz was asked by one St. Louis TV station about the absence of Luther Burden III, but otherwise, there wasn’t much mention of the stars who spearheaded the Tigers’ 21 wins over the past two seasons. The aforementioned returners have been supplemented by competitive depth across the board but especially on defense.

“This is the most transfers we’ve been able to bring in since we’ve been here, which I think is kind of the new norm in college football,” Drinkwitz said. “But I do think continuity has been a little bit of our secret sauce.”

Dorm-life challenge

Mizzou players will once again start camp living in dorms near the football facility as a way to build some team chemistry and minimize distractions. They seemed generally chipper about the whole ordeal, but they’d hardly gotten settled by the time they reported to camp-opening meetings on Sunday.

A little bit of summertime dorm-living might not wind up being entirely fun — and that’s by design.

“No. 1, we want (fall camp) to be hard,” Drinkwitz said. “We want to test these guys, both mentally and physically, so that they have the understanding that when they face something hard, they can overcome it. We don’t want the first hard thing that they face to be being down seven or 14 or down at halftime or a two-minute drive. We’re going to put them in some adverse situations, starting (with) living in the dorms.”

Team still connected after OTAs

The steady expansion of college football in a calendar sense means the start of fall camp has taken on a little bit less of a “first day of school” vibe. It wasn’t that long ago that the team was practicing together for summer organized team activities, or OTAs. The intensity will certainly ramp up over the next few weeks, but the Tigers are already quite familiar with each other.

The days of coaches chomping at the bit to get a first look at their players during camp are largely gone.

“That’s the myth of college football,” Drinkwitz said. “I mean, we had OTAs in June. It was less than 30 days ago that we were all out there and getting a practice in. I’m really more excited now that we’re this many days away from the game. Now we have a real focus to our work.”