OTAs and mandatory minicamp are on the horizon for the Las Vegas Raiders, and the discussion of who will be the team’s starting QB for Week 1 will get louder. All signs point to Kirk Cousins being the Silver and Black’s starter, but there’s a chance Fernando Mendoza could win the job.
Regardless of who wins the job, Mendoza is the Raiders’ future and will be starting games, whether that’s Week 1 or at some point during the 2026 NFL season.
Ahead of the former Indiana Hoosiers star’s rookie season, ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit shared his outlook for the Las Vegas signal-caller.
“You know why you believe in him? Because he’s going to beat you with his mind,” Herbstreit said on the May 12 edition of the “Pat McAfee Show.” “There aren’t a whole lot of guys that know the game and understand the game well enough to see pre-snap movement in the NFL, the complexities of half the defense playing this coverage and the other half playing something else.
“He may need some time. I mean, Troy Aikman, Peyton Manning, everybody needs time to adjust to the speed of the game. But he is going to be a game manager. He’s going to be a distributor. And his X factor is he moves better than I think a lot of people want to give him credit for.”
Pat McAfee Doesn’t Hold Back on Fernando Mendoza
Moreover, Pat McAfee issued his high hopes for Mendoza, noting times when he’d cover Indiana games and see the new Raiders QB throw the football around. McAfee also believes that Mendoza won’t have any issues with NFL defenses.
“Every ball is a tight spiral. Yeah, we watched him throw during TV timeouts. We watched him throw during games; we watched him throw on the sideline with his brother. We watched him almost take Curt Cignetti’s head off whenever he was warming up.
“Every ball is a dart, every single one. The RPO offense that everybody was kind of judging them on, I think that’s modern football. And I think the people who think he won’t be able to figure out defenses, this guy’s actually brilliant.“
Raiders Are Installing a New Culture
The Raiders are still in the early phases of their rebuild, and establishing the right culture will be a major priority for new head coach Klint Kubiak. After spending last season with the Super Bowl LX champion Seattle Seahawks, Kubiak has firsthand experience with what a winning environment looks like.
That background could help him earn buy-in quickly from players in Las Vegas. Speaking on Seattle Sports, Cousins said he expects elements of the Seahawks’ culture to carry over with Kubiak to the Raiders.
“There’s no doubt that some of the verbiage and culture-building principles that were used in Seattle will be applied here in Las Vegas,“ Cousins said in a May 8 video from Seattle Sports. “They worked. We’d be foolish not to apply them.
“There are some things that weren’t a part of that world that I was in with the Kubiaks five years ago that will be a part of our world now because Mike Macdonald left such a great impression on Klint and on Andrew [Janocko].”
Raiders Issued Strong Message on Fernando Mendoza Outlook