NAU Coach Wright Targets Fit, Character in Highly Ranked FCS Transfer Class

Brian Wright made the only kind of splash that matters in the portal era: a quiet, methodical one. Northern Arizona's 2026 transfer portal class landed at No. 3 in the FCS according to 247Sports, and when paired with the program's No. 2-ranked high school signing class from December, the Lumberjacks became the only FCS program in the country with both a top-three portal haul and a top-three prep class in the same cycle.

Wright announced all 23 portal additions on March 16, and the class reads like a position-by-position answer to specific competitive gaps rather than a volume grab. Eleven of the 23 signees are trench players. Nine arrived to reinforce offense, 14 to strengthen the defense, and 10 are Arizona products reclaimed after initially bypassing Flagstaff out of high school. Six of those in-state returns came directly from FBS programs.

"This class was built very intentionally by targeting young men who had opportunities to leave Arizona out of high school, but chose to come back home," Wright said. "We also took a systematic approach to finding the best fits at every level, signing players from the NAIA, Division II, FCS and FBS ranks."

That multi-level sourcing strategy has a name on it: Darius Haskin. The 6-foot-1, 171-pound wide receiver from Buckeye, Arizona arrives from Rocky Mountain College after posting 45 receptions for 861 yards and 10 touchdowns in only seven games during the 2025 season, earning First Team All-Frontier Conference honors as one of just two freshmen in that conference to do so. Haskin directly addresses Wright's stated need for route diversity around returning Lumberjack quarterbacks.

On the offensive line, KT Carter (6-4, 285 pounds) returns to Arizona after three seasons at Hawai'i, while Bryce Hevesy (6-5, 290 pounds) arrives from the U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School having been rated the fourth-best offensive tackle in Arizona coming out of Scottsdale's Desert Mountain High School. In the secondary, Shoes Brinkley provides the kind of production that doesn't need a qualifier: the 5-9, 193-pound safety from McNeese led his team with 81 tackles in 2025, adding 4.5 tackles-for-loss, a sack and three interceptions across all 12 starts at free safety.

That last point matters more given what the 2026 schedule demands. NAU opens August 29 at home against Eastern Washington before heading to Tucson for an FBS matchup with Arizona, and for the first time in program history, the Lumberjacks will play nine Big Sky conference games, a product of the league's additions of Southern Utah and Utah Tech. Nine conference games against an expanding Big Sky compresses the margin for slow starts considerably, which makes Wright's emphasis on trench depth and tested secondary production look less like preference and more like necessity.

Wright has framed the program's pitch to recruits around culture and player development rather than NIL transactions or one-year roster engineering, and back-to-back winning seasons with a postseason appearance in his second year give that pitch credibility. The 2026 infrastructure, with portal contributors like Haskin, Brinkley, Carter and Hevesy slotting into an established structure rather than defining it, is a program building through continuity. The Big Sky schedule won't offer any favors. Wright has spent the spring making sure NAU doesn't need any.