For the second year in a row, Mizzou will enter spring camp with a true QB battle on its hands. Unlike 2025, the Tigers will have three competitors rather than two.
With Beau Pribula off to Virginia and Sam Horn off to a career in professional baseball, Mizzou’s staff needed to bring in two QBs to supplement the roster in 2026. Austin Simmons was the first step and former UConn starter (and later backup) Nick Evers is the second.
Evers, who has one-year of eligibility remaining, is entering his fifth
year of college football and is the definition of a journeyman. That may sound like a pejorative assessment, but it also means he’s easily the most seasoned signal caller in Mizzou’s QB room.
So could he surprise us and walk away as Mizzou’s starter this coming fall? Let’s take a look…
Where He Fits
Well… behind center right? At quarterback? Receiving the ball from the center, handing it off to Ahmad Hardy, throwing it to Donovan Olugbode?
I kid, I kid. Evers joins the group of Matt Zollers and Austin Simmons as prospective starting quarterbacks for Mizzou’s 2026 roster, and there’s no doubt most will view him as the veteran depth option. It makes sense from a logical standpoint. Zollers is the guy Drinkwitz hand-picked from the high school ranks, and Simmons is being paid quite a bit of cash to come to Columbia from a College Football Playoff semi-finalist. Evers, by contrast, was a backup for a decent independent program.
Evers, more so than either Zollers or Simmons, brings a dual-threat option to the table. He’s a former blue-chipper who has spent time at Oklahoma and Wisconsin before settling at UConn in 2024 as the Huskies’ starter out of summer camp. He threw for 918 yards at an average of 5.1 yards per attempt and rushed for 245 at an average of 3.1 per rush. So yeah… nothing eye-popping.
However, there’s talent there, which you can see if you watch his highlights. He’s a tall, thin QB who has athleticism and an arm that plays at the DI level. For whatever reason, he’s just never been able to put it all together. Perhaps he finally reaches that level under Drinkwitz and Chip Lindsey? At the very least, he’ll give Mizzou an experienced third-stringer and a scout QB with the ability to test the defense in practice.
When He Plays
That’s entirely up to him, isn’t it? No doubt the Mizzou staff sold Evers on the chance to come in and compete in a true quarterback competition. Zollers has the leg up in program experience, Simmons has the pedigree and the paycheck, but Evers is the most experienced starter of the trio. He’ll bet on himself to come in and make a run for Mizzou’s QB1 role. Betting odds — sorry, there aren’t actually betting odds on this, at least not that I know of — would say that Evers is the clear underdog out of the three candidates, but Evers probably doesn’t view it that way… and that’s how Mizzou fans should want it.
What It Means
For all intents and purposes, it means that Mizzou’s QB room for 2026 is set. If you go by the rule of thumb that you need a QB for each graduating class, Evers is for ‘26, Simmons is for ‘27, Zollers is for ‘28, and Gavin Sidwar stands in for ‘29.
More importantly, it means that Mizzou’s QB room will be littered with guys who have been around the block. Even when the 2025 Tigers had all their QBs available, their third-stringer was Zollers, a guy who had never played in a Division I game. Now Mizzou’s worst-case scenario involves a guy like Evers — or Simmons and Zollers if they don’t play well enough — taking over when things get dicey. That’s a much better position than Mizzou was in this time last year.
