Missouri Tigers lose QB to injury, fall to Vanderbilt: Takeaways & reaction
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Beau Pribula suffered leg injury, carted off; QB status clouds Mizzou playoff hopes.
- True freshman Zollers entered, went 14-of-23 for 138 yards; late Hail Mary fell short.
- Defense limited Vanderbilt to 265 yards, but Mizzou converted only 5-of-16 third downs.
A top-15 matchup in Nashville certainly lived up to expectations.
It was supposed to be a fight, and that’s what fans got as No. 15 Mizzou hit the road against No. 10 Vanderbilt. Defense made all the difference in this game until Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia leaped into the end zone in the final minutes for the decisive score.
The Missouri Tigers had 1:52 to work with on their final drive, and reached the 1-yard line on a last-ditch Hail Mary, but the clock expired on the 17-10 Vanderbilt win.
“Good SEC football game,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “Those games come down to one or two plays, and we were on the short end of it.”
Here are five takeaways from the action...
Beau Pribula’s injury status
There are two questions looming over this loss for Mizzou:
There’s the obvious: How does this affect Mizzou’s path to the College Football Playoff, if there’s still one remaining?
And then there’s the question of Beau Pribula’s injury status, after he was carted off the field and helped into a wheelchair.
Regardless of the final score, Pribula’s injury was the biggest takeaway from Saturday.
The QB was carted off after being stuffed on fourth-and-goal in the third quarter. Pribula was pushed backward as a Vanderbilt player clung to his left leg, causing an apparent injury that put him in an air cast shortly after.
Tight end Brett Norfleet also exited the game with an upper-body injury in the fourth quarter. On Mizzou’s last drive, center Connor Tollison limped off the field, though he did return before the game’s end.
“He tried to give it a go but wasn’t able to get back. So I don’t know,” Drinkwitz said of Norfleet. “Good time for the bye week.”
Drinkwitz also said postgame it could be “a while” before Pribula returns.
Freshman QB Matt Zollers was called into action
With Pribula missing time, Zollers, a true freshman, is the likely name to become the Tigers’ starting quarterback.
After Pribula’s injury, Drinkwitz turned to him in the third quarter. Zollers went 14-for-23 for 138 yards, connecting with Judes James — who, coincidentally, was also in the game as Norfleet’s replacement — for Mizzou’s lone touchdown.
It wasn’t perfect, though. On one weird play, Zollers attempted to hand off to running back Jamal Roberts, but the ball was ripped away and ended in a fumble recovered by Vanderbilt.
“Really proud of him,” Drinkwitz said. “I thought he did an excellent job. Obviously, the one turnover on a mesh read. But other than that, I thought he played really big.
“(He had) fourth-down conversions to give us a chance, and then when they took the lead, to drive the ball down and score was really impressive. So the moment wasn’t too big for him.”
It’s also worth noting 36 of those yards came on the game’s final play, a last-ditch heave to Kevin Coleman Jr., who was brought down inches from the end zone. The play was called an incomplete pass but overturned to a completion on review.
Mizzou’s defense was good. So was Vanderbilt’s
It took until the 3:51 mark in the third quarter for the first touchdown in this one.
Vanderbilt’s Makhilyn Young scored on an 80-yard rushing touchdown, fresh off a missed kick from Mizzou’s Robert Meyer.
It was the first lapse in what was otherwise a solid game for Mizzou’s defense. The Tigers held the Commodores to 141 yards and a field goal in the first half, while limiting Vanderbilt to 1-for-5 on third down in that time.
For the game, Vanderbilt went 3-for-10 on third down.
The Commodores did get close to scoring in the first half, but they had a touchdown called back by a holding penalty. Missouri held Vanderbilt to 265 yards of total offense. Missouri totaled 376.
The Tigers struggled on third down
New week, same story for the Tigers.
Third down has been an issue for the Tigers at times this year. And Mizzou went 5-for-16 in third-down situations against Vanderbilt.
Those woes were alleviated on one late sequence. While the Tigers failed to convert a third-and-23, they moved the chains with a defensive pass interference call on Vanderbilt.
The last conversion was the deep ball that Coleman caught at the 1.
Mizzou made things harder on itself
The Tigers still had a chance late, but penalties certainly didn’t make things any easier.
Missouri committed five penalties in the fourth quarter, totalling 48 yards. Three of those came on the final drive as Mizzou was fighting to tie the score with a touchdown.
Tollison was hit with a tripping call. Curtis Peagler was assessed a false start. And the most notable: Zollers, on a first down, was called for intentional grounding. The 10-second runoff put Mizzou in a do-or-die Hail Mary situation.
“We were behind the yellow flags most of the day. That’s stuff we’re going to have to, in these close games, fix,” Drinkwitz said. “We’ve got to do a better job of not creating penalties.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2025 at 6:48 PM.
