COLUMBIA, Mo. — It doesn’t take a football genius to spot the obvious storyline when Missouri kicks off its 2025 football season on Thursday.
If your instinctual guess starts with “quarterback” and ends with “competition,” you’re on the right track. But at this point in the Tigers’ signal-caller saga, you know the drill. Or at least know some of the drill.
Beau Pribula and Sam Horn will split reps, as coach Eli Drinkwitz specified last week. Per ESPN, that’ll be Pribula taking the first half and Horn playing the second — a mirror image of the Brady Cook-Horn competition from 2023. If this goes like the 2023 opener did, the quarterback decision will look like a pre-determined outcome in favor of the first-half’s QB.
So for Mizzou’s 6:30 p.m. kickoff against Central Arkansas on the SEC Network and KTRS (550 AM and 106.1 FM) locally, it’s time to find some other things to follow.
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Besides the in-your-face quarterback narrative, here are three other things to watch when the Tigers and Bears open the season:
Who makes a strong first impression?
Plenty of players will appear in black and gold, given that Missouri — more than a five-touchdown favorite — ought to win handily and be able to use its second- and even third-team players for portions of the game. As is the norm in modern college football, many of them will be newcomers.
Even if they only get, say 30 snaps, it’s still their one and only chance to debut in black and gold.
“That’s our message to our team this week,” Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “Make our identity come to life. You get one shot at your first impression.”
Among the players whose first appearances for Mizzou will be especially anticipated: edge rusher Damon Wilson II, who was the top-ranked defensive end in the transfer portal this offseason; running back Ahmad Hardy, whose stats as a true freshman at Louisiana-Monroe suggest he’s got the potential to be an electric tailback; middle linebacker Josiah Trotter, a freshman All-American last season now set to start in the heart of the MU defense.
Shutout watch
In last year’s opener against a Football Championship Subdivision opponent, Missouri held Murray State scoreless — and then went on to pitch a shutout against Buffalo in Week 2.
Given the aforementioned new stars on the defensive side of the ball, plus the likes of safety Jalen Catalon, hybrid safety Daylan Carnell and returning edge rusher Zion Young, the Tigers defense looks like it could be even better in 2025.
So how possible is another season-opening shutout? That might depend more on how MU’s defensive backups hold up in the second half than what the starters do early on, but a clean sheet is certainly on the table.
The Central Arkansas offense leans toward being an unknown with a new playcaller, but that shouldn’t prove to be all that much of a challenge for the home team’s defense.
“We’re going to have to be prepared for a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, it’s about us,” Drinkwitz said. “It’s about us establishing our identity. It’s about us establishing the brand of football that we want to play.”
Given the quarterback uncertainty, at least for this week, that brand may very well start on the defensive side of the ball.
How does the O-line hold up?
Against a team like the Bears, there aren’t a lot of positives that can be definitively learned. Even if, say, Pribula finds a way to throw for 500 yards and five touchdowns in a half, there will still be the asterisk of it coming against Central Arkansas.
There’s a flip side to that coin, though, that suggests negatives can be learned. If, say, Missouri’s recently reshuffled offensive line doesn’t hold up against what’s likely to be the softest pass rush it’ll see all season, that would be a red flag.
So maybe there’s a bit of pressure on that position group to protect the quarterback competitors early on, just to avoid raising concern. Still, that shouldn’t be all that much of an issue, and the line could benefit from building chemistry together in a game setting.
