
Several veteran QBs are visiting or have been offered in the early hours of portal season.
Are you feeling the madness yet?
The transfer portal has been open for barely 48 hours, and more than 1,200 players are already officially in. Even more have announced their plans to enter. It’s chaos, mostly for chaos’ sake, and we’re barely 10 percent of the way through the first window.
At least 100 — probably more, I haven’t checked in a second — of those players are quarterbacks looking for a new place to stick their hands in the groin of a sweaty offensive lineman and throw around the pigskin. Missouri, as it so happens, is in the market for one of them.
This shouldn’t be a surprise given how actively the Tigers have recruited QBs in the past, when they didn’t really need to. But given the impending departure of Brady Cook following the Music City Bowl, it should be even less so. The depth in the QB room is good — Drew Pyne should be around as a sturdy program guy for the next year or so, while Aidan Glover and Matt Zollers represent the future of the position. Hell, if the Tigers need to pull the Sam Horn ripcord at some point, who’s to say they won’t? Things have been weird enough on that front already, they might as well get a little weirder.
I digress. Despite the wealth of QB options the Tigers have, there’s no one on the roster that has proven the ability to be a consistent, high-performing Power Four starter. Mizzou, fortunately enough, is in a position where they need one of those types, at least if they want to maintain the momentum of the past two seasons. We’ve been told that the NIL budget for the most important position on the field is healthy, so much so that the staff is operating at the highest ends of the portal group. Thus far, we know the staff has been active on at least four QBs:
- Miller Moss, senior QB from USC and reported prize of the transfer QB class thus far
- Connor Weigman, former Texas A&M QB, Mizzou playoff spoiler and five-star high school recruit
- Thomas Castellanos, former Boston College starter who transferred after losing his starting gig in the middle of the 2024 season
- Jackson Arnold, former Elite 11 darling and, most recently, target of Oklahoma ire online
Moss and Castellanos have either visited or are planning to visit, while Weigman and Arnold have just been reported to have Mizzou interest. It’s early and we still may be a ways away from learning the identity of the next Tigers’ starter. But we can discern some quick takeaways from this early activity.
First, and most encouragingly, the staff seems to view next season as another opportunity to make a College Football Playoff run. While the level of roster investment may depend on the QB they can eventually land, you can’t recruit high-end players without the promise of a high-end roster. We know the Tigers have some rebuilding to do on the offensive line, but the defense returns a lot of pieces from a strong 2024 unit, and the Tigers are brimming with young playmakers on offense. If you can attract guys like Moss and Castellanos to campus with the promise of wins — and the right NIL deal, of course — it indicates that success is expected in 2025.
Second, it shows that the staff has… let’s say “flexible” plans for the future of the position. When you land a QB of Zollers pedigree, it’s assumed that he’ll be stepping into the starter’s shoes within a year or two of setting foot on campus. And while that’s not out of the question, pursuing Weigman and Arnold would seem to suggest that the staff is open to other possibilities. Adding either of the two, elite talents with multiple years of eligibility, would be an investment in the present and the future of the program, immediately putting Zollers’ timeline into question. His serious ankle injury may also play into the staff’s decision-making, as the freshman has a long way to go in his rehab and development.
Finally, and probably most obviously, it appears the staff is prioritizing a QB who can offer at least some dual-threat capability. Miller Moss is the exception here, as he’s purely a pocket passer, albeit a very good one. But all of the other three players on Mizzou’s early wish list have displayed either a willingness or a preference to threaten opposing defenses with their feet as well as their arm. This isn’t a surprise given Drinkwitz’s long history of working with and recruiting mobile QBs.
If anything, this is a reflection of our second takeaway above. Adding a QB like Miller Moss would be a departure from Brady Cook, and the staff’s willingness to be flexible is a welcome development. The Tigers should have no shortage of playmakers, and appear to be after more in the portal. Having a mobile QB is nice, but it shouldn’t preclude the Tigers from getting the best signal caller they can afford.
So how does this end up for the Tigers? You should know better than to think you’ll get that answer right now. Going too deep into the offseason without a QB is dangerous, so you’d think the staff will work to tie up their guy in the coming week. Having him in house for the Music City Bowl prep, to get some time around the staff and Brady Cook would be an excellent way to kick off the 2025 season.
But the Tigers are competing with the richest programs in the country for some of the QBs on the market, and getting your top target is going to be tough. We don’t know exactly what the board looks like, but we do have an idea of who is near the top. Time will tell just how deep Drinkwitz has to go before he gets the heir apparent to Brady Cook.
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