Position Dive: Quarterback

Welcome to a new short series where I’m going to be deep diving into some of the new players the Tigers added this offseason.

I’ll be deep diving into these transfers’ collegiate stats in the time they have racked up on the field. A lot of my numbers will be coming from Pro Football Focus.

So now that we have the basics out of the way, I wanted to start with the most important position group for the Tigers, and for any football team really: quarterback. Yes, I’ll look into Austin Simmons, but I also want to look into how journeyman Nick Evers fits into the team along with Matt Zollers.

Newcomers

Austin Simmons

Simmons comes to the Tigers with two partial seasons of work at his former school, Ole Miss, and while he has stats that show some clear issues, he has shown bright moments. I also don’t think the stat sheet always tells the whole story.

An example of this is Austin Simmons’ passing stats in 2025 on throws of 20+ yards. While to a naked eye you see 0 passing touchdowns and 2 interceptions, those aren’t necessarily always a product of his throws.

Despite the 2 interceptions on 20+ yard passes, out of 6 graded throws, Simmons is throwing ‘Big Time Throws’ a lot more often than he is producing ‘Turnover Worthy Plays’.

Mizzou’s new offensive coordinator, Chip Lindsey, saw the most success in his coaching career in his tenure as UNC’s OC coaching Drake Maye. During his 2023 season — which is a much larger sample size than Simmons — Maye had pretty similar stats on deep throws.

I’m not saying that Simmons can do the same thing on a larger scale, like starting the whole season, but I do think people need to watch him play before assuming he has this ‘massive’ interception problem. I also think Lindsey will develop Simmons to shape a playstyle similar to the one he ran at UNC.

For reference, here are Beau Pribula’s stats in the category from last season:

Simmons finished the 2025 season with a PFF offensive grade of 74.5 and a passing grade of 74.2 (4 passing touchdowns, 5 interceptions). Former Missouri quarterback Beau Pribula finished last season with an offensive grade of 76.1 and a passing grade of 73.0 (11 touchdowns, 9 interceptions).

PFF grade doesn’t mean everything but if this is an indicator of anything, it’s that the Tigers are getting a quarterback that has proven that he can run the position in the SEC, it’s just a question of whether Simmons takes that next jump.

Nick Evers

While Evers is likely just a depth addition, with only one year of eligibility remaining, the journeyman could play down the road with how uncertain Simmons’ production is. I also think Drinkwitz slots Evers at No. 2 and gives Zollers his redshirt year.

Evers saw his most productive season in 2024 when he started eight games for UConn. His highest graded PFF performance was a 48-14 blowout win over FAU. Despite the one-sided matchup, the Huskies found most of their production through the run game. That didn’t stop Evers.

Despite only 88 passing yards and a single passing touchdown, the Flower Mound, Texas, product finished with 78 rushing yards and a pair of touchdowns. Even though Simmons is likely to earn the starting job with the Tigers this upcoming fall, Evers could find production in a two QB set if Drinkwitz wants to reach into his bag of tricks.

Despite starting in eight games in 2024 UConn has always had their guy in Joe Fagnano — who finished this season with an impressive 28 touchdowns on a single interception.

Returner(s)

Matt Zollers

I want to preface this part by saying, like I mentioned earlier, I do expect sophomore quarterback Matt Zollers to take his redshirt this year after being forced out of it last year. Even though he only started two games last year, he had plenty of opportunity to show whether he was ready or not for SEC football. The result? meh

Zollers’ most productive passing performance came in a 49-27 win over Mississippi State which marked Zollers’ first SEC win as a starter. He finished with 112 passing yards, two touchdowns and an interception. The win was big thanks to a 300-yard rushing performance from Ahmad Hardy.

Mizzou fans saw a different player at quarterback when Zollers was in vs. when Pribula was starting. While Pribula found a lot of success in the run game and through short passes, Zollers was ready to sling it.

The true freshman quarterback was slinging the ball deep 18.6% of the time which is quite the jump from Pribula’s 8.5% of attempts going 20+ yards. Pribula found most of his work on short passes. He was throwing between 0-9 yards 44.6% of the time compared to Zollers’ 28.6%.

While it’s hard to tell whether one way worked better than the other, it’s important to note that Zollers is throwing the ball deep at a higher clip than any recent quarterback coming through Columbia. Former Mizzou QB Brady Cook (2024) and soon-to-be Mizzou QB Austin Simmons (2025) threw deep balls at a 15.4% and 16.0% rate, respectively.