Kolbe Katsis signs with Broncos after star all-purpose season at Northern Arizona

Kolbe Katsis did not need draft night validation to get to the NFL. The former Northern Arizona wide receiver signed with the Denver Broncos as an undrafted free agent on April 25 after a senior season that made him one of the FCS’s most dangerous all-purpose players.

Katsis, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound redshirt senior from Owasso, Oklahoma, paired production with explosive playmaking across two phases. He finished 2025 with 1,068 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns, ranked eighth nationally in receiving yards per game at 89.0, and placed 12th in receiving yards and 11th in receiving touchdowns. He also landed on the All-Big Sky first team at both wide receiver and kick returner, a rare double that reflected how Northern Arizona used him as more than a conventional target on the outside.

His impact showed up in chunks. Katsis produced 20 plays of at least 20 yards from scrimmage and scored four touchdowns of at least 50 yards. One of the biggest came on special teams, when he broke a 100-yard kickoff return for a touchdown against Northern Colorado, the first kick return score by a Lumberjack since 2017. That return also earned him Big Sky Special Teams Player of the Week honors on Nov. 10, 2025.

The offensive production kept coming. Katsis later piled up three touchdowns in Northern Arizona’s 35-27 win over Cal Poly, a performance that brought him Big Sky Co-Offensive Player of the Week honors on Nov. 17, 2025. By season’s end, he had become the first Northern Arizona player to reach 1,000 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns in the same season since 2019, a benchmark that underscored how important he was to the Lumberjacks’ offense and field-position game.

Over two seasons at Northern Arizona, Katsis caught 95 passes for 1,566 yards and 12 touchdowns in 23 games with 22 starts. He also earned Big Sky All-Academic honors in 2025 and was named to the NFF Hampshire Honor Society in 2026, adding to the profile of a player whose value traveled well beyond the box score.

Katsis’ path to Flagstaff began at Pittsburg State, where he burst onto the scene as a redshirt freshman in 2022. He started 12 of 13 games, caught 22 passes for 505 yards and five touchdowns, and averaged 32.8 yards on 15 kickoff returns. The MIAA named him Freshman of the Year that season, and Denver now gets the latest crack at a player whose receiving chops and return ability made him NFL-relevant even without a draft call. Red Murdock closed the Broncos’ draft with the No. 257 pick, and Katsis joined the wave of college free agents competing for a camp job in Denver.