Sunday Reader: NFL Draft cramming, Pat Fitzgerald gets it, looking ahead to CMU, WMU spring games
The NFL Draft kicks off this week, plus CMU and WMU have spring game dates still to come.
Spring football winds down this week, with Central Michigan holding a spring scrimmage on Tuesday evening at Kelly/Shorts Stadium and Western Michigan holding its 15th spring practice in front of fans on Saturday.
There’s also the NFL draft starting Thursday night in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and there’s where we’re going to start with this Sunday Reader.
But first, catch up on Mitten Football’s coverage from this past week and spring games.
Andrew Graham
Andrew Graham
Andrew Graham
Andrew Graham
Who might get drafted from the Mitten
Here we turn to truly one of the annual leviathans of American journalism, Dane Brugler’s “The Beast,” his annual pre-draft guide that is these days getting published at The Athletic. It’s exhaustive, with literally more than 1000 prospects evaluated and ranked within and has endlessly useful information about everyone from top prospects to shot-in-the-dark depth defensive tackles from schools you’ve never heard of before.
Brugler also compiled a Top 100 prospect ranking, and just two players from the Mitten made that list, both from Michigan: Edge rushers Derrick Moore (No. 77 overall) and Jaishawn Barham (No. 100).
However, a handful of players from the various schools are projected to be drafted, with Brugler applying the following round grades.
- Michigan edge Derrick Moore, 3rd round
- Michigan edge Jaishawn Barham, 3rd-4th round
- Michigan TE Marlin Klein, 4th round
- Michigan LB Jimmy Rolder, 4th round
- Michigan State C Matt Gulbin, 5th round
- Michigan State P Ryan Eckley, 6th round
- Western Michigan edge Nadame Tucker, 6th-7th round
- Michigan K Dominic Zvada, 6th-7th round
- Central Michigan edge Michael Heldman, 7th round
- Michigan FB/TE/RB Max Bredeson, 7th round
- Michigan LB Ernest Hausmann, 7th round-free agent
Eastern Michigan didn’t land a player with a draftable grade per Brugler, but the Eagles could see RB Dontae McMillan and punter Mitch Tomasek carve out roles with strong rookie minicamp showings.
All told, Brugler has 75 players from across the five Mitten schools included in his predraft rundown and several players who didn’t earn draftable grades will likely find themselves on NFL rosters.
Pat Fitzgerald gets it
How good Michigan State actually ends up being this fall is still not fully clear. The schedule is fairly difficult — Notre Dame, Michigan, Oregon and Washington all on the docket, plus some Big Ten wildcards — and it wouldn’t be surprising if this transfer-laden roster churns out somewhere in the range from 5-7 wins.
And while that would be disappointing for a Michigan State fandom yearning to climb higher than the Big Ten, the overarching impression from this spring is that new head coach Pat Fitzgerald gets the gist of what success will look like at MSU.
He gets that this is a program that has relatively recently competed for and won Big Ten championships — albeit before college football’s current monied era — and what it takes to win in the Big Ten. He seems to have a handle on the fact that he needs to build up this MSU roster to be big and fast and strong and that one can do that at Michigan State without inking a revolving door of four-and-five-star recruits, though they have and will want to sign those players as possible.
And more than anything, he knows who he has to beat: Michigan.
“Fired up for that next step,” Fitzgerald said to open his post-spring game presser. “Just so we're all scoring at home, we start camp 110 days from now, we'll be back in Spartan Stadium to take on the opener in 141 days, and we go down the road to take on Michigan in 203 days. Those things are all top of mind with me, with our coaches and with our program. So that's what's coming up next for us.”
In many ways, what Fitzgerald and Co. are doing is putting a modern spin on what made the Michigan State program so potent under Mark Dantonio, recruiting overlooked midwest talent, developing like mad men in the weight room and on the practice field, and eventually bullying the opposition for 60 minutes. And athletic director J Batt seems very intent on getting the money cannons firing for Fitzgerald and Co. to build competitive teams in modern football.
The wins may take more than a year to come as the program needed some real updating after the prior two staffs flamed out, albeit in very different fashions, in short succession.
But Fitzgerald’s Spartans are going to embody something of the mindset of Captain Jack Aubrey from the classic film “Master and Commander,” when thinking about how his naturalist friend can memorialize him.
“Name a shrub after me,” Aubrey, played by Russell Crowe, says. “Something prickly and hard to eradicate.”
And Fitzgerald is charting a course to try and bring the Spartans back to being the league’s preeminent thorny, hard-to-uproot opponent.
Looking ahead to CMU, WMU spring games
Two main things to monitor at the CMU spring game: Quarterback and who plays defense.
The quarterback situation is relatively straight forward insofar as the cast of characters: It’s Jadyn Glasser, Angel Flores and Marcus Beamon competing in the main group. Daniel Gomez and Geno Seets, who converted from wide receiver for the spring, are also getting run at the position.
CMU rotated the quarterbacks last year and offensive coordinator Jim Chapin said recently that if they feel multiple quarterbacks are good enough and can help them win, they will play. If one is night and day better than the rest, they might be the full-time starter. Nothing is decided yet, but Tuesday’s evening scrimmage is another big opportunity for the quarterbacks to keep climbing.
And on defense, outside of Jaion Jackson, Korver Demma and Quavion Bird, CMU doesn’t return any starters from the 2025 team. There'll be a lot of new players on that side of the ball, both with transfers and rising players, and the final opportunity for Sean Cronin and Co. to evaluate the defensive roster with pads on until fall.
Western Michigan is holding its spring finale on Saturday, April 25, and it’s a rather similar story to the Chippewas. The quarterback position isn’t a question, but seeing how much Broc Lowry has grown as a passer will be a key thing to monitor for the Broncos.
And on defense, outside of returning the bulk of the secondary, the Broncos have new players across the line and linebacking corp. They also have a new defensive coordinator in Greer Martini.
The Broncos were elite on defense in 2025, and Martini and Co. have a big ask to live up to that sort of standard with the latest iteration of the defense.
