A pipeline has begun to emerge for Missouri Football in a spot not many would assume: Southeastern Pennsylvania.
More specifically, a quarterback pipeline. Over the past year, the Tigers have recruited three quarterbacks from the Philadelphia area.
In 2025, the No. 1 quarterback in the state, Matt Zollers, from Spring-Ford Area High School in Royersford, Pennsylvania, made the move out to Columbia. He’s now the backup to another Pennsylvanian starter, Beau Pribula, the Penn State transfer, who hails from York, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Central York High School.
The pipeline doesn’t end there. As of now, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, native Gavin Sidwar looks to be the Tigers’ blue-chip recruit of the 2026 recruiting class.
Sidwar, who hails from La Salle College High School, is rated as a three-star recruit by 247 Sports. He’s also ranked as the 27th best quarterback in the nation and the 11th best player in Pennsylvania.
The 6-foot-3, 190-pound right-handed signal caller garnered offers from numerous Power Four teams. He committed to Rutgers back in the summer of 2024, before decommitting and ultimately committing to the Tigers on April 18 of this year. Sidwar chose Missouri over schools like Indiana, Penn State, Virginia, UCLA and Duke, among many others.
Sidwar has been nothing short of outstanding for the Explorers over the past three seasons. After earning the starting job as a freshman, he went 2-3 as the starter for La Salle before his season was ended prematurely by a broken collarbone. Before the injury, Sidwar put up impressive numbers, going 68-of-108 for 651 yards with seven touchdowns in the air and two on the ground.
In his 2023 campaign, he set school records for a sophomore, completing 186 of his 285 passes while throwing for 2,439 yards and 29 touchdowns to get a 6-5 La Salle team to the second round of the playoffs.
His junior season ended up being even better, as he went 220-of-318 for 2,747 yards and 32 touchdowns to just six interceptions. He’d do all this while leading his team to a 10-1 record, with a notable win over one of the nation’s best teams and a city rival in St. Joseph’s Prep, 35-34.
Through six games in 2025, Sidwar is 110 for 160 through the air with 18 touchdowns. The Explorers are 5-1 following a week six division win against St. Joseph’s Prep.
When Sidwar does eventually join the Tigers, fans should expect him to slot in comfortably in the Pennsylvania quarterback room behind both Pribula and Zollers in 2026.
With redshirt junior Sam Horn’s future in limbo following another season-ending injury, along with the unpredictable landscape of the transfer portal, it remains to be seen what the Tigers’ quarterback room will look like next year. However, a framework has begun to form with the expectation being that Pribula will stick around as the leader of the offense in his final year of eligibility.
It can be discerned that Zollers will most likely be second string before taking the reins in his junior year, while Sidwar will take his lumps as a freshman third stringer before more than likely getting a chance to compete with Zollers down the line.