The Las Vegas Raiders were the worst team in the NFL by a comfortable margin last season, limping to a 2-15 finish and the No. 1 overall pick. The Geno Smith gamble didn’t work out, and the Pete Carroll tenure is now over after one disastrous season.
Of course, the reward for sitting through such a miserable campaign is that Las Vegas holds the keys now to the NFL Draft and will be on the clock first on April 23. Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the presumed first overall pick, and the Raiders have a need at quarterback after Smith’s underwhelming season. As a result, Mendoza has been the assumed pick in Las Vegas.
This is a shallow quarterback class, with Mendoza being the only guy regarded as a future franchise quarterback after Oregon’s Dante Moore chose to go back to school for the 2026 season. As a result, there are surely a number of teams interested in calling the Raiders to move up to the top spot as they look to address their quarterback needs.
Even though the Raiders are likely to get some enticing offers for the top pick and Mendoza, there is no circumstance where they should trade the pick away. Here’s everything about Mendoza that makes him the right guy for Las Vegas as it embarks on its latest rebuild.
Mendoza has the infectious personality of a franchise QB
Before we get into the football reasons why Mendoza is worth the No. 1 pick in the draft, let’s talk about him as a leader. Every time he steps in front of a microphone, it’s clear why Mendoza’s teammates and coaches love him. Curt Cignetti gets a load of the credit for leading Indiana to a 16-0 season and a national championship, but Mendoza deserves some credit for that as well.
By all accounts, Mendoza is a very hard worker and a great leader, and you can see that in the way that he plays and the way that his teammates play for him. The Raiders are in desperate need of a culture reset, but new head coach Klint Kubiak isn’t a rah-rah personality. Maybe Mendoza can be the guy to inject that locker room with some life and help turn things around in 2026 and beyond.
This should also make Mendoza’s rookie year a big positive because, even if he isn’t lighting things up on the field as he adjusts to NFL life, he will have a positive impact on the Las Vegas locker room.
Mendoza is a prototypical quarterback who can thrive under Kubiak
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Mendoza isn’t the dynamic athlete that some of the very best quarterbacks in the world are, but he is a capable athlete who can get out of the pocket and make plays with his legs when necessary. However, he has the traits as a passer that you look for in a potential franchise quarterback.
The first thing that sticks out about Mendoza is his accuracy. He almost never misses a throw at any level, and is willing to push the ball down the field when the chance presents itself. He had success against both man and zone coverages this season, and while the passing game dried up sometimes against the best defenses on Indiana’s schedule, Mendoza still showed the ability to fit the ball into some tight windows.
Kubiak’s offense involves a lot of play action and throwing the ball over the middle of the field, things that Sam Darnold did very well in Seattle this year. Mendoza is proficient in those areas and won’t hesitate to attack the deeper windows in the middle rather than settling for checkdowns.
The other thing that Mendoza has in common with Darnold, Kubiak’s last quarterback, is his toughness. Nothing phases the Cal transfer, and it seems like he is able to put just about anything behind him. Take the Big Ten Championship Game, for example. Mendoza was nearly knocked out of the game by Caden Curry on the very first play with a massive hit, but he missed just one play before returning and leading Indiana to a 13-10 win.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Mendoza won’t have some growing pains in the NFL, as he is far from a perfect prospect. First, Kubiak runs a lot of his offense from under center, which is something that Mendoza almost never did at Indiana. He will have to get much more comfortable with his back to the defense in Las Vegas.
The other common criticism of Mendoza is that he ran a lot of RPOs at Indiana, which is true. Curt Cignetti built a large part of his offense around having Mendoza read just one player in those RPOs, something that Kubiak didn’t do a ton of in Seattle. It will be interesting to see how much of those schemes he implements to help Mendoza ease into the league and give him some easy buttons.
Mendoza is a no-brainer pick
Here’s the bottom line: even if Mendoza isn’t a generational quarterback prospect, he is the easy choice at No. 1 for the Raiders. Teams spend years and years searching for good quarterback play, and there are few avenues to get that like taking one at the top of the draft.
Is Mendoza’s ceiling that of a top five quarterback in football? That I don’t know. But there’s no question that, based on what he showed at Indiana and even before that in a much worse situation at Cal, that he can be a good quarterback that you can win with year after year. That makes him the easy choice for the Raiders, no matter what else they have on the table.
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