Northwestern quarterback Mike Wright is entering the transfer portal after one season with the Wildcats program, 247sports Chris Hummer first reported Wednesday morning.
While Wright spent the 2024 season in the Big 10, the 6-foot-4 signal caller has spent most of his career in the SEC. Wright played three seasons at Vanderbilt and one season at Mississippi State before transferring to Northwestern.
Wright started just two games for Northwestern last season, completing 38-of-66 passes for 354 yards and one interception. He also ran for 84 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries.
The bulk of Wright’s playing experience came in his three seasons at Vanderbilt. He was largely the Commodores starter in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, combining to complete 178-of-323 for 2,016 yards, 20 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He added 890 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns.
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Wright was not the full-time starting quarterback in his year at Mississippi State. The Bulldogs mostly used him as a situational running quarterback with the Atlanta native rushing for 453 yards and three touchdowns.
Tennessee football is looking for a quarterback in the transfer portal after losing starter Nico Iamaleava to the transfer portal. Iamaleava spent one year as Tennessee’s starting quarterback, completing 64% of his passes for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions.
With Iamaleava gone, Tennessee has two scholarship quarterbacks on its roster in redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and early enrollee George MacIntyre.
Josh Heupel and his staff hope to find a sure fire starting quarterback in the portal. Wright isn’t that, but if Tennessee misses out on other targets then the dual-threat quarterback could be a good depth piece that’s capable of competing for the starting job with Merklinger.
