Wagner started 53 games for the Wolverines beginning his sophomore season. Harbaugh said he had an unusual maturity about him that made the coach comfortable enough to start Wagner in his second year on campus.

“My recollection of it was just the readiness, a consistency,” Harbaugh said. “Same guy day in and day out… I got that sense from him.”

Originally, Wagner thought he could make the NFL after his junior season. However, he tore his ACL in his senior season. After that, it took until he was done with his sixth year, snapping in seemingly every big game imaginable, for him to realize the league was realistic.

“I’ve done it for four years at a high level, so it was just like ‘yeah, I can do this,'” Wagner said.

Harbaugh said while it’s hard for him to pick a specific moment when he knew Wagner could play at the next level, he pointed to the 2021 Big 10 Championship against Iowa as one example. The Hawkeyes brought a look the Wolverines weren’t expecting and hadn’t prepared for, but Wagner adjusted and solved the problem on the fly.

“You think about the great players, the consistency day to day is super important,” Harbaugh said. “The really special ones, they find ways to go above and beyond their regular responsibilities outside of the baseline expectations, and that was an example where he did that. I probably still owe him for that.”

After his time in Ann Arbor came to a close, Wagner received interest from a few teams during the predraft process, including his former head coach Jim Harbaugh’s Los Angeles Chargers. Ultimately, he made the deal with the Bengals during Day Three of the draft: If he wasn’t picked, he was coming to Cincinnati.

“I’m glad it happened, I have family in Cincy and have grown up coming to Cincy,” Wagner said. “It worked out pretty well.”

Wagner competed with incumbent long snapper Cal Adomitis throughout 2025 offseason workouts, training camp and the preseason before ultimately winning the job. Wagner said it’s a night and day difference mentality wise entering 2026.

“I was competing with Cal, and Cal’s a great guy, but [we] knew one of us is going to have the job, and one of us isn’t,” Wagner said. “It was just that added tension… There was definitely added pressure.”

Adomitis had spent the previous three seasons snapping for K Evan McPherson and worked with P Ryan Rehkow during the 2024 season. When Wagner came in, the new specialist unit had to feel each other out. Harbaugh guessed it takes six weeks or so on average for the field goal unit to develop the chemistry needed to be successful, but he said certain units can gel much more quickly.

“The better the players are, the faster anything like that is going to happen. It’s a trust and a predictability,” Harbaugh said. “The better you are, the less variability there is which is going to lead to an increase of that chemistry and that trust being developed.”