Wednesday’s big question was easy sufficient: Sam Horn or Beau Pribula?
The reply? Sam Horn and Beau Pribula.
Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz introduced in an announcement Wednesday afternoon that each Pribula and Horn will play towards Central Arkansas on Thursday, Aug. 28 in Columbia for the Tigers’ first recreation of the 2025 season.
“I knowledgeable the workforce this afternoon that each quarterbacks will play within the first recreation,” Drinkwitz mentioned in a workforce assertion. “I need to see them in a game-day scenario to make a remaining willpower.”
The pinnacle coach had teased the potential of a call arriving inside 24 hours of his Tuesday media availability. Drinkwitz didn’t specify whether or not or not that meant the Tigers had been going to call a beginning quarterback.
Wednesday’s information implies that Missouri is not going to identify an official QB1 not less than till Kansas involves city Sept. 6 to reignite the Border Warfare rivalry.
Pribula, a Penn State switch who’s listed at 6 foot 2, 212 kilos, is the extra skilled possibility amongst MU’s quarterbacks.
He has appeared in 24 complete video games over the course of his profession. Pribula has a 37-of-56 (66.1%) passing mark with 9 touchdowns and one interception. He has rushed for 571 yards and 10 touchdowns on 94-career carries, which is greater than six yards per rush.
That is now the second time that Horn will probably be concerned in a Week 1 quarterback twin.
Horn, a former four-star prospect out of Lawrenceville, Georgia, signed for the Tigers as a two-sport athlete — soccer and baseball — within the Class of 2022 as a top-10 quarterback in his class.
The 6-foot-4, 222-pound quarterback has competed for the beginning job earlier than, most notably in 2023, when Cook dinner and Horn cut up halves within the Tigers’ season-opener towards South Dakota. Horn made a number of reduction appearances over the course of that season.
In 4 complete appearances — and 42 complete snaps — for Mizzou throughout the 2022-23 seasons, Horn has thrown eight complete passes for 54 yards with one landing and one interception — albeit on a tipped throw. He has rushed 4 occasions for 9 yards. The quarterback missed the total 2024 season whereas he recovered from offseason Tommy John surgical procedure.
Horn can also be a right-handed pitcher for Mizzou baseball, and he not too long ago signed a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers with a $495,000 signing bonus after being chosen as a Seventeenth-round choose within the 2025 MLB Draft. The Dodgers drafted him with the information that he deliberate to compete for MU’s beginning QB job and was going to stay with the soccer workforce by means of the autumn.
So, with no separation or resolution, the intrigue now will run into Week 1, the place all eyes at the moment are on the order of operations.
On Tuesday, Drinkwitz mentioned that the choice has been weighing on him.
“It’s one thing that is saved me up each evening and wakes me up within the morning,” Drinkwitz mentioned. “I feel these guys have performed actually good — each of them. Very well. Actually, the two-minute, four-minute (drills from Tuesday’s observe) simply sort of sealed it in my thoughts, like, ‘my gosh, these guys each can play at a excessive degree and win.’ So, what meaning shifting ahead? I do not know but.”
Central Arkansas, an FCS outfit, is unlikely to present Missouri an excessive amount of bother within the Thursday evening matchup. It was doubtless, even when the Tigers had named a starter, that each QBs would see the sphere within the matchup. However the participant who comes out first is the participant who you would moderately named the starter.
How Mizzou dishes out the alternatives additionally will probably be fascinating.
In 2023, Horn solely entered the sport within the second half, as soon as Brady Cook dinner had given the Tigers an unassailable lead.
Will that be the case once more, or will Pribula and Horn cut up quarters — and even sequence?
Time will inform.
Now it’s confirmed, because the spring and 18 practices of fall camp weren’t sufficient to offer ample separation for the teaching employees to make a name.
Drinkwitz known as the potential of a two-quarterback system “hypotheticals,” which does appear to rule that possibility out.
So, sooner or later, a name will presumably come.
However that day is not going to be Wednesday.
“You would like it was straightforward and that there can be one thing definitive that you would level at and say, ‘Hey, that is the explanation why,’ however that is not gonna be the case,” Drinkwitz mentioned Tuesday. “So we’ll determine it out from there, and that is what they pay me to do. They pay me to make powerful choices. That is what I’ve obtained to do.”