Matt Gulbin is back in Mel Kiper Jr.'s latest mock draft, and Michigan State football may finally have a reason to watch the board closely on Thursday. Kiper has Gulbin going to the Cincinnati Bengals in Round Six with the No. 189 pick, one of just two Spartans he projects to hear their names called.
The other is Ryan Eckley, whom Kiper sends to the Baltimore Ravens at No. 211 in Round Six. Eckley is also the only Michigan State player on Kiper's Top-150 Big Board, which gives him the clearest path into the draft of any Spartan in the group.
That is a modest showing for a program that once built a historic NFL draft streak, even if that run now appears to be long gone. Still, there are a few other Michigan State players on the bubble who could sneak into the final round and keep the total from stopping at two.
The timing matters because the NFL Draft starts Thursday, turning a mock projection into the first real test of how many Spartans can actually survive the cut. If Kiper's read holds, Gulbin and Eckley will be the names Michigan State follows most closely when the late rounds arrive.
What happens after that will decide whether the Spartans leave the weekend with a pair of selections or a larger class than the latest projections suggest. For a program looking for any draft momentum it can get, even a modest rise on the board would count as something.