Nick Evers has been in enough quarterback rooms to know how the pecking order feels, and at Missouri this fall, he’s the one getting tagged as “Unc.”
That’s what happens when you’re the veteran in a group, even if you’re still only 22 and won’t turn 23 until October. Evers laughed about it Sunday before Missouri opened fall camp.
“It’s weird,” Evers told PowerMizzou.com on Sunday, before the Tigers opened fall camp. “People are calling me Unc” - as in, Uncle.
The nickname fits the vibe in Columbia. Garrett Riley, Missouri’s new quarterbacks coach, already made a joke about Evers back in March, calling him the “old man in the group.”
Riley, who is 36, added, “Nick's the old man in the group. Hell, he may be older than I am.”
Evers is one of the two quarterbacks Missouri brought in through the transfer portal in January, and he’s set to battle Matt Zollers for the QB2 job during camp. He arrived after two seasons at UConn, but his college path started long before that.
Missouri is his fourth school in five seasons. The 6-foot-3, 195-pound Texas native spent 2022 at Oklahoma, 2023 at Wisconsin, and then played at UConn in 2024-25 before landing in Columbia.
For Evers, the bounce from program to program hasn’t been wasted time. He sees it as part of the process that shaped him.
“It’s been a journey, a much-needed one,” Evers said. “I feel like everything happens for a reason.
I've picked up a lot of great things from a lot of different programs under a lot of different coaches. But it was all needed, and it's all made me who I am today.”
Evers also had high praise for Riley, saying, “He's a proven leader. He's had a lot of success with quarterbacks at a bunch of different places. We're super blessed to have him here.”
Missouri is officially 27 days from its 2026 season opener against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, set for Thursday, Sept. 3 at Faurot Field at 7 p.m. on SEC Network.
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