Fernando Mendoza makes his first NFL start on Sunday, when the Las Vegas Raiders host the Seattle Seahawks at Allegiant Stadium at 4:05 p.m. ET, which is 11:05 p.m. in Cairo. The No. 1 pick in April’s draft got the job when Kirk Cousins was traded to Minnesota on deadline day, and the first thing he did at his news conference the next day was thank him.
“I wanted to make a statement where I really truly from the bottom of my heart wanted to thank Kirk and the entire Cousins family,” Mendoza said on Wednesday. “As a family, [they’ve] done so much for me. They’ve essentially taken me into their household when they were here, and they welcomed me with open arms.” It would have been easy, he said, for a veteran who had “already proved everything” to be “a little bit more dismissive,” but Cousins taught him film study and “how to operate a starting quarterback,” and “shared with no restrictions or no constraints.”
“People are like, Kirk got traded”
Mendoza said he had no inkling of the trade. “Truthfully, I just was in the locker room yesterday and people are like, Kirk got traded,” he said. “And everyone just said that’s the nature of the business.” The news, he said later, “came at a little bit of an unexpected time, but still a fantastic opportunity.”
The lesson he took from the quarterback room is that “you’re always one play away, always be prepared,” he said, and Cousins “was a great example and leader of that on how to be prepared and how to make no moment too big.” Asked what he will take into Sunday from Cousins, he named two things: “always being prepared and doing everything possible you can to prepare yourself to best serve your teammates,” so that “regardless of the result,” there is “no doubt in your mind that you did everything possible,” and “to be yourself.”
He also said he is not the same player who arrived in the spring. Coaches in the room sometimes refer back to “Spring Fernando,” he said, laughing that he did not want to talk about himself in the third person. “It just shows how much improvement there has been. And I’m a lot more confident as a quarterback, and I feel like more developed,” he said. “Whether it’s under center, connecting with teammates, understanding an NFL scheme, there’s so many areas that I’ve improved on.”
“The quarterback is only one-eleventh”
Mendoza kept coming back to one phrase. “At the end of the day, the quarterback is only one-eleventh,” he said. “And I need to do my job to best showcase all the other talents we have on the offense and on the team.” Starting an NFL game “is a new step,” he said, but he agreed with coach Klint Kubiak that it should not be a whirlwind. On Seattle, he said, “they’re one of the best defenses in the league, so it’s going to be a great challenge, and I’m excited to do my one-eleventh out there.”
The Seahawks have allowed 18.0 points a game, fifth-fewest in the league. The Raiders have allowed 29.8, the most. Mendoza’s only NFL snaps came on one late series in the 45-17 loss at New England on October 11, when he went 6 of 8 for 48 yards. In his one season at Indiana he threw 41 touchdown passes and won the Heisman Trophy and the national championship for a 16-0 team.
Kubiak: “We’re not putting it all on him”
Kubiak, who was Seattle’s offensive coordinator last season, said nothing in particular stood out about Mendoza in practice, “and that’s a good thing.” “It’s consistency, playmaking, knowledge of our scheme,” he said. “Just his daily preparation has been up to standard, and now he’s got to go prove it in the game.” He said the Raiders would not be “peeling back anything” in the playbook for a first start.
Mendoza brings “some juice in his legs,” Kubiak said, “but in this game, on Sunday, it’s going to be about way more than his physical talent. It’s going to be about his leadership, his knowledge of the offense, his ability to read defense,” and “his reliance on his teammates and everybody around him elevating their level of play. We’re not putting it all on him.” Asked what Mendoza gained from sitting behind Cousins, Kubiak said “the number one thing would just be how to prepare,” from when to get body work and a lift in to “how late Kirk is staying.”
On Friday, Kubiak was asked how to teach a mobile rookie to stay in the pocket. “It’s a process from now until the end of his career,” he said. “Go through your progression, and obviously if it’s not there yet, you got to go run the football.” He also said the Raiders have only Mendoza and Aidan O’Connell available, so “we got to go to plan C” for an emergency quarterback, and that adding another quarterback is “definitely in discussion.” Of Seattle’s Drew Lock, who starts again for Sam Darnold, he said: “To me, Drew is a starting NFL quarterback. … He’s 2-0 this year.”
Aidan O’Connell: “I definitely wasn’t first overall”
O’Connell, who took over as a rookie starter in the middle of the 2023 season, said he is “maybe uniquely capable” of relating to Mendoza. “I definitely wasn’t, you know, first overall draft pick, and I don’t know what that pressure is like, but I took over my rookie year in a similar time,” he said. He said Mendoza “prepares like he’s going to be the starter,” and recalled “three or four throws on a Thursday” in practice about a month ago that were “incredible.” “He kind of set a certain standard,” O’Connell said, “and then each week he kind of upped that standard.”
With Cousins gone there is “one less voice in the room,” O’Connell said, and he wants to keep it the way Cousins ran it: “He never made it like, I’ve been here 15 years. … He included us and made us feel like we were part of it.” Maxx Crosby said Cousins brought “stability” and “confidence,” and that being in the same room with him every day “is going to help Fernando going into this first start.”
Cousins, meanwhile, starts for the Vikings at Green Bay earlier on Sunday. The full story of the trade and both quarterbacks is in our step-by-step interactive. Another rookie, Arizona’s Carson Beck, also makes his first start on Sunday, against the Rams.
No published comments yet. Start the conversation.