Columbia
Matt Zollers was thrown into a tough spot. Early in the second half, his team’s offense was struggling, and now, the ball was in the hands of a freshman.
While he wasn’t perfect, he was poised. He made a few big-time plays to keep his team in the hunt, and while he came up short in the end, Zollers had instilled a new sense of optimism with his performance.
Surely, you thought this was a recap of the Vanderbilt game. But what if I told you Zollers had done this before?
Four years ago, Zollers was a freshman at Spring-Ford High School in Pennsylvania. In late September, the Rams were down by two touchdowns to their arch-rival, Perkiomen Valley. Needing a spark, then-head coach Chad Brubaker decided to make a switch at quarterback, subbing out senior Ryan Freed for Zollers early in the second half.
The 15-year-old didn’t play like a freshman. Zollers wasn’t perfect, but he tallied some positive scrambles and helped Spring-Ford get back into the game.
The Rams fell short, losing 28-22. But even amid defeat, it didn’t feel like a freshman was playing quarterback. Michael Palmer, now the Spring-Ford head coach who was the tight ends coach at the time, shared words similar to those used by Eli Drinkwitz when asked about a younger version of Zollers.
“He’s never been afraid of big moments,” Palmer said. “He never looked like a freshman,” he added.
After suffering a serious ankle injury against Vanderbilt, Pribula will be out for an extended period of time. That puts much of Mizzou’s weakened hopes of making the College Football Playoff on Zollers. It’s a tall task for any signal-caller, let alone a freshman.
But Zollers, like Palmer said, has never looked like a freshman. The former four-star recruit didn’t just earn his prestige through talent, but experience.
In middle school, Zollers attended Spring-Ford’s youth football camps. His older brother, Zach, now a redshirt sophomore linebacker at Pittsburgh, played for the Rams at the time.
So coaches already knew who Matt was. In eighth grade, Matt played on Spring-Ford’s ninth-grade team. He turned so many heads that the coach at the time told Brubaker to keep an eye on the super-sized middle-schooler who was lighting up the older kids.
Zollers was brought up to the varsity team early in his freshman year. After the Perkiomen Valley game, Brubaker did something he’d never done in his 14 previous seasons at Spring-Ford: Zollers and Freed would alternate drives going forward. His talent was simply too impressive to keep on the sidelines.
“It wasn’t too big for him,” Brubaker said. “He wasn’t fazed by 18-year olds trying to get him.”
Zollers had a monster arm that was hard to miss, one that Palmer said was probably the strongest of any high school athlete he’s ever seen.
“You could hear the football coming off his hand. You could hear the football flying through the air,” Palmer said. “That’s not something you typically hear from a high school kid.”
His highlights are filled with throws that traveled 50 or 60 yards in the air. There were bullets to the opposite side of the field, lasers into tight windows and moonshots on the run. Zollers sometimes looked like he was challenging himself to make the most difficult throw possible, which is where he would run into other issues.
Early on, Zollers relied heavily on making big-time throws. Instead, he needed to master short and intermediate concepts.
“He wanted to rip everything,” Brubaker said. “There were a couple of situations where we had someone running to the post, and there was no free safety, but he tried to rip it in. By his junior year, he really learned how to just lay it up.”
Much of Spring-Ford’s offense features mid-range routes, including digs and crossers. Over time, Zollers improved drastically at connecting on those routes, and that growth showed against Vanderbilt. On the touchdown to Jude James, Zollers looked right, waited in the pocket, moved left and hit James on a crossing route.
As Zollers became a more well-rounded quarterback, the highlight reel got longer. On the second play of his sophomore year, he threw a howitzer to his brother on a skinny post that went for a long touchdown.
Against Downingtown East, one of the top teams in PIAA’s 6A division, Zollers scrambled for a long touchdown on the first series of the game. Palmer thought he was going to be pushed out of bounds multiple times, but Zollers kept going.
Sandwiched between was a junior season in which Zollers broke the school record for passing yards in a season with 2,917. He also ran for over 400 yards, which included a long touchdown run against Cumberland Valley, one of the biggest public schools in Pennsylvania.
“We always knew Matt was extremely talented,” Palmer said. “But that was the moment we all kind of knew that he was different.”
The play was a zone read, which required Zollers to make a snap decision on whether to hand the ball off to the running back or keep it himself. As Zollers tucked and ran, a linebacker was right there waiting to tackle him. But he pump-faked a throw, which caused the linebacker to jump. Zollers ran past him — and everyone else — for a house call.
“I said, ‘That was a give read,’” Palmer recalls telling Zollers. “He goes, ‘Yeah, I know, but I set that kid up.’”
Spring-Ford runs what Palmer calls a sophisticated offense. Zollers was responsible for setting protections along the offensive line, which isn’t universal among college teams. Coaches were comfortable tasking Zollers with the responsibility because his brain was as effective as his arm.
“That involves you needing to have a lot of trust in your quarterback,” Palmer said. “He was the engine that made our whole offense go.”
Growing pains were inevitable. Brubaker remembered watching a freshman game where Zollers kept setting the protection to the opposite side of where the opposing team’s blitz was coming from. Zone reads were also common, and while Zollers improved at those in high school, mess-ups would still await him in college.
During a potential go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter against Vanderbilt, Zollers bobbled a handoff to Jamal Roberts on a mesh read, and Commodore safety CJ Heard took the ball away.
Adjustments will likely continue. But at each stop he’s made, Zollers, 19, has exceeded expectations, on and off the field. A gruesome ankle injury cut his senior season short, and it put his availability for the spring in doubt (Zollers was an early enrollee at Mizzou).
But after hard work, Zollers was fully healthy for the spring, which came as a pleasant surprise to his coaches at Spring-Ford.
“His recovery was ridiculously quick,” Brubaker said.
His story is still being written, but if the early chapters of his high school career are any indication, the future is bright. During his freshman season at Spring-Ford, Zollers made a throw during pregame warmups that caught Brubaker’s eye so much that it spurred a big-picture question.
“‘Hey Matt, do you know how good you could be?’” Brubaker said he asked Zollers. “He looks at me and goes, ‘Yeah, I do coach.’ It wasn’t cocky. It was more matter-of-fact.”
Zollers’ performance against Vanderbilt spurred big-picture questions, too, many of which were optimistic. His team’s future, however, doesn’t seem as bright, as the Tigers don’t have much margin for error, if any, if they want to make their first-ever CFP appearance.
But if there’s any freshman quarterback with the resume to accomplish it, Zollers is right up there with the best of them, even if he didn’t have the same prestige as five-star recruits like Michigan’s Bryce Underwood or Alabama’s Keelon Russell.
For years, Zollers has been the kid who shines in big moments. The kid who’s always done more than expected.
The kid who’s never, ever played like a freshman.
“He’s got the talent to do it,” Palmer said, “but he’s going to back that up with preparation. That’s what makes me feel confident. I’m not surprised he’s put himself in this position.”
Copyright 2025 Columbia Missourian
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