Mizzou's Class of 2025 is off with a bang.
On Thursday afternoon, Missouri football secured a commitment from Matt Zollers, a four-star quarterback in the Class of 2025, making him the first player to commit to Eli Drinkwitz and the Tigers' next recruiting class.
Zollers is the No. 8-ranked quarterback in his class, per 247Sports' composite rankings, the No. 78-ranked player in the nation and the No. 2 player out of Pennsylvania . He's listed at 6 foot 3½, 205 pounds.
The Royersford, Pennsylvania, product was seemingly down to Mizzou and Georgia for his decision, with several recruiting forecasters picking Columbia as his likely landing spot Thursday morning. Zollers' home-state school, Penn State , also was in the hunt for his commitment, but by decision day the two SEC schools emerged as the frontrunners.
247Sports logs Zollers as recording two straight 2,000-yard passing seasons for Spring-Ford High. Last season, the recruiting site shows Zollers going 182-for-290 (62.7%) passing with 37 touchdowns and two interceptions. He rushed for 420 more yards and seven scores.
"We ask a lot of the quarterback position and he's on film doing all of these things that he would eventually be doing in college," Spring-Ford coach Chad Brubaker told Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald, which shared their reporting with the Columbia Daily Tribune.
"He can do everything," Brubaker said. "We run a lot of different things, but one of the things is we do a lot of zone reads and also RPO stuff. He obviously has a tremendous arm. He is very intelligent, (has) a very high football IQ and wants to be good. A great leader. He checks off all the boxes. He can run, he can scramble, he has a good feel in the pocket."
Current Missouri starting quarterback Brady Cook is entering his final season of collegiate eligibility in 2024. That will leave the Tigers with former four-star Sam Horn , who will almost certainly sit out the 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery this spring, as the most likely replacement under center in Columbia.
MU also could return Drew Pyne , who is set to join Missouri in May, after landing the former Notre Dame and Arizona State QB out of the transfer portal in early March. True freshman Aidan Glover, a three-star quarterback out of Memphis, Tennessee, just went through his first spring camp as a Tiger, rounding out MU's current scholarship signal-callers.
That leaves Missouri, essentially, with a quarterback in each of its recruiting classes.
The transfer portal, as was evident at MU this past December, can throw a wrench in the best laid plans at the position. Four-star freshman Gabarri Johnson transferred from Mizzou to Oregon State ; and backup junior Jake Garcia left Columbia for East Carolina.
That seemed to leave Missouri with a hole at its backup spot with Horn destined for the sideline, until it turned to the portal to find replenishment.
Now, Missouri's Class of 2025 is up and running.
Beating out the Dawgs for a top-100 prospect ain't a bad start, either.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Four-star quarterback Matt Zollers commits to Missouri football Class of 2025
