AP

In November, when Mike Florio surveyed NFL talent evaluators about former LSU defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, the general consensus was that Mathieu was a fourth-round draft pick. If Mathieu has improved his draft stock by working out and staying out of trouble since then, he hasn’t improved it by much.

Mike Mayock reported on NFL Network on Tuesday that there was a buzz coming out of the Combine that Mathieu impressed NFL teams, both with his faster-than-expected 40-yard dash and with his forthright answers to the tough questions teams were asking about how he allowed marijuana to derail his college career. But there’s only so much a player can do in February to change NFL teams’ opinions about him.

“I don’t think he’s going to go in the first two rounds, that’s my gut, and from talking to teams, it’s kind of a third or fourth-round pick. That’s what I’m hearing,” Mayock said of Mathieu.

The team that drafts Mathieu will be getting a player who won the Chuck Bednarik Award as the best defensive player in college football, not to mention the SEC Defensive Player of the Year Award and MVP awards in the Cotton Bowl and the SEC Championship Game. So if Mathieu does last until the third or fourth round of the draft, he’ll have the most impressive resume of any player still on the board.