Marvin Austin admitted he made a mistake in an interview with The News & Observer Friday. “I messed up a great situation,” he told Joe Giglio in an interview in Orlando, Fla. “It was my fault.”

Yes, he did. Carolina fell all the way to the Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tenn., in a year when it had the talent to win the ACC title for the first time since 1980.

Now, Austin is playing in the East-West Shrine Game and trying to boost his NFL stock after not playing last season. There were some who thought Austin, a big defensive tackle with a burst up the middle, would be a first-round pick. But despite not playing last season, he looks like he will go no lower than the second round.

NFL teams covet defensive linemen and have a hard time finding players with the size and quickness required for the position. One website, WalterFootball.com, has Austin going in the second round, and 63rd overall, which is a pretty fair guess.

Austin has two strikes against him, which might keep him out of the first round. The obvious one is his off-the-field woes at UNC. NFL teams count character more than fans might think, but Austin’s violations were more along the lines of flouting NCAA rules and showing poor judgment. Nothing he did was criminal.

The second strike is that Austin had a habit of taking plays off. Sometimes you watched him and thought wow, he’s tremendous. Other times you barely noticed him. By comparison, you noticed players like Robert Quinn and Bruce Carter every play. NFL teams hate seeing players loaf, and Austin will have to convince clubs he still has plenty of desire in his tank after a year away from contact.