Scott Gulbransen
Let me say something that I think a lot of Raider Nation already feels but maybe hasn’t heard said plainly: the pile-on against Fernando Mendoza picked up steam right around the time it became obvious he was going to Las Vegas. Make of that what you will.
Now look, I’m not here to pretend there are no legitimate questions about Mendoza’s game. There are. He played almost entirely out of the shotgun at Indiana. Only about 3% of his college snaps came from under center. He’ll need to adjust to reading defenses that play with different disguises than anything he faced in the Big Ten. Those are real things, and any honest evaluation has to include them.
But here’s what I also know: no quarterback prospect is surefire. Not ever. Not one. Trevor Lawrence was “generational.” Bryce Young was “polished beyond his years.” JaMarcus Russell was, and I’m not making this up, compared to John Elway. The NFL has humbled every consensus can’t-miss guy at one point or another. So when an anonymous NFL offensive coach tells The Athletic he prefers Ty Simpson, that’s one opinion. It doesn’t make Mendoza damaged goods. It makes him a prospect — like every other player who has ever walked into a draft.
What the critics keep glossing over is the part of Mendoza’s résumé that doesn’t fit neatly into a scouting report.
Raiders Smart to See Fernando Mendoza’s Intangibles
This guy transferred from Cal to Indiana and won a national championship. Led the Hoosiers to a 16-0 record. Won the Heisman. Threw 41 touchdowns against six interceptions. Engineered a game-winning drive at Penn State. Got knocked out of the Big Ten Championship game against Ohio State and came back and won it. Those aren’t system stats. That’s a kid who plays bigger than the moment, every single time the moment gets big.
Dan Orlovsky watched eight games and said he saw “a lot of clean pockets.” You know what else you saw in those games? An undefeated season. A quarterback who understood exactly where to go with the football and did it quickly, repeatedly, against the best defenses in the country. The clean pocket complaint is a strange one. Elite quarterbacks are supposed to create clean pockets with their pre-snap reads and decision-making. That’s called being good.
The Jared Goff comparison making the rounds on FS1 is meant to sound insulting. He’s been one of the most efficient passers in the NFL over the past three seasons. If the floor on Mendoza is Jared Goff, the Raiders should feel pretty good about that bet.
Raiders Making a Calculated and Educated Bet on Mendoza
And that’s really the point. This is a bet. It’s always a bet. Every first overall pick is a bet. The Raiders haven’t had a franchise quarterback worth talking about since Rich Gannon was slinging it in 2002. That’s nearly a quarter century of carousel quarterbacks, wasted seasons, and fans watching other teams develop guys while Las Vegas spun its wheels. Mendoza gives this franchise a legitimate shot to end that.
Tom Brady, who knows a thing or two about evaluating quarterbacks, has spoken highly of him. Four NFL executives told The Athletic they view Mendoza as the consensus top pick. PFF graded him at 91.6 for the season. His adjusted completion percentage ranked second in the country.
Some of the criticism is a legitimate evaluation. A lot of it is combine week noise. We live in the age of hot takes for content generated at a time when the Raiders’ pick was already a foregone conclusion and the only way to get clicks was to go against the grain. Raider Nation has seen that movie before.
Mendoza is a winner. His numbers back it up and his character backs it up even more. For a franchise that has been waiting this long, that’s not something to talk yourself out of.
