What awaits Fernando Mendoza in his NFL debut? Facing Seahawks’ No. 1 defense, Raiders remind rookie he’s not ‘Spring Fernando’

Fernando Mendoza didn’t “want to talk about myself as a third person.”

But the No. 1 overall pick of the 2026 NFL Draft admitted Wednesday that in the Las Vegas Raiders quarterback room, just that sometimes happens.

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Raiders quarterback coach Mike Sullivan looks at his rookie and speaks in the third person.

“In the quarterback room, sometimes Coach Sully, he’ll reference back to ‘Spring Fernando’…” Mendoza told reporters. “It just shows how much improvement there’s been, and I’m a lot more confident.”

“Spring Fernando” had plenty of proverbial skins on the wall, chief among them a Heisman Trophy and a national championship in his lone season at Indiana. But “Spring Fernando” didn’t understand his NFL playbook and teammates as deeply as Mendoza does now, teammates and coaches say. “Spring Fernando” responded differently to blitzes and showed a less advanced command of the huddle; he conceptualized two-minute drills and situational football with less nuance, and he threw the ball less accurately.

None of this, the Raiders say, is a knock on the quarterback whom “you don’t draft him unless you feel that way, taking him first overall,” head coach Klint Kubiak said. But entering an NFL meeting room for the first time can’t compare to observing half a season behind 15-year NFL veteran Kirk Cousins. A first glance at the playbook doesn’t instill concepts as deeply as running the scout team against an NFL defense each week.

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So as the Minnesota Vikings approached the Las Vegas Raiders at the trade deadline about acquiring Cousins, the Raiders faced a decision. What was more valuable: letting Mendoza sit a few more games before handing the reins over, or a third-round draft pick and $10 million in salary credit?

“We had to make a hard decision,” general manager John Spytek told reporters. “I mean, we’re all kind of staring the future in the face here with Fernando.”

On Sunday in Las Vegas, Mendoza will receive his first NFL start. The football gods have not gifted him breaks. The Raiders host the Seattle Seahawks, who have allowed the fewest yards per game in the NFL through nine weeks. Only three defenses across the league have allowed fewer points. Adding to the chess match nuances, as well as the heightened emotions: Kubiak will be scheming against the team whose offense he coordinated to the Super Bowl nine months prior. Play-callers will know each other intimately. Kubiak hopes Mendoza does not feel pressure rests on his shoulders alone.

“We have an awareness of his situation and being in his first game,” Kubiak said. “However, we’re not peeling back anything and we’re going to go do what the whole team does best, all 11. … 

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“He’s got to do his job and not worry about a whole lot else. Everybody does their 1/11th, and everything around him elevates their play.”

Raiders’ best bet is taking pressure off Mendoza. But are they capable? 

When the 2016 NFL season kicked off, the Dallas Cowboys arrived at the “Sunday Night Football” opener with a rookie quarterback. 

Incumbent starter Tony Romo had fractured a bone in his back during a preseason game, after second-string quarterback Kellen Moore broke his ankle during training camp. So the Cowboys’ fourth-round pick got the start. Dak Prescott completed 25 of 45 pass attempts for 227 yards, no touchdowns and no turnovers as the Cowboys lost 20-19 to the New York Giants.

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Dallas would go on to win its next 11 games and 13 overall en route to the NFC’s No. 1 seed. Along the way, the Cowboys decided their recipe: Don’t ask Prescott to air it out and play hero ball in every moment. 

Fast forward to Mendoza, and former Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett recommends a similar strategy.

“You try to take the burden off of him…” Garrett, now on NBC’s “Football Night in America” studio show, said Wednesday on a conference call. “Quiet the game down for him, try to get the running game going early, high-percentage throws early, move the quarterback. Try to get him to be 5-for-5 [passing] before he even thinks about it to get into the flow of the game. Those aren’t easy things to do, but that has to be your objective.

“Once he gets his legs underneath him and he’s got a good look in his eye, then you start trying to attack the defense a little bit more.”

Mendoza has some traits playing in his favor for that proposed game plan. He was highly accurate last year in college, completing 72% of his pass attempts even as he led all FBS passers averaging 10.78 air yards per attempt. The 23-year-old Mendoza is more mobile than his 38-year-old predecessor. And the Raiders, who rank fifth in passing through nine weeks under Cousins, have a handful of reliable targets in the passing game — beginning with tight end Brock Bowers (whose alignments more often position him like a receiver than an in-line tight end) and receiver Tre Tucker. The Raiders’ offensive line has also pass-protected well, ranking second in pass-block win rate, per ESPN’s advanced metric.

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Working against Mendoza: the rest of his Raiders surrounding cast and his first opponent. While Mendoza, Kubiak and the locker room emphasized players stepping up to share the load with Mendoza, Cousins was disproportionately carrying the team until he got traded. While Cousins ranked fifth in passing yards and 11th in passer rating, the Raiders’ run game has languished with the second-fewest rushing yards per game (71.3) and the fewest rushing yards per attempt (2.89). The Raiders’ defense hasn’t alleviated the offense’s load: No team has allowed more points than the Raiders’ 29.8 per game, and no team has allowed more yards per game than the Raiders’ 385.4.

Las Vegas has won four games overwhelmingly because of its passing game — and now faces Seattle’s No. 1-ranked defense and No. 1 passing defense for Mendoza’s first outing. When the Seahawks shuttered the Kansas City Chiefs’ otherwise explosive run game last month, Patrick Mahomes and Co. managed just 3 points.

Multiple former offensive play-callers cautioned against translating that into a pass-happy plan.

“You want [his pass attempts] to be in the 20 to 25 [range],” one former NFL play-caller told Yahoo Sports on condition of anonymity. “You don’t want the kid to go out there in his first-ever game against the Seattle defense and throw the ball 43 times.”

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Early discipline matters, Garrett said.

“If you try to go after these guys too early, then you get a lot of negativity happening for the quarterback in the first start of his career [and] it can be tough sledding,” Garrett said. “Get him settled. It’s OK to punt early. But take the burden off him and get him comfortable.”

Raiders on transition from Cousins: Not ‘punting on this season’

Mendoza’s teammates don’t expect perfection from their new leader under center. They do expect resilience, which their 6.5-point home underdog status suggests they may need.

“Everyone has faith in him,” Bowers said. “You might have a bad play here and there, but you just got to flush it. And I know he does a good job at that.”

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In two initial college seasons at Cal, Mendoza completed 66.5% of his pass attempts for 4,712 yards, 30 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. In his third year, at Indiana, that rose to 72% of passes for 3,535 yards, 41 touchdowns and just six interceptions. No one in FBS football last year passed for more than Mendoza’s 41 touchdowns and no one was more efficient than his 182.9 rating.

But a national championship moment caught his current teammates’ eyes as much as Mendoza’s accuracy and precision.

Facing fourth-and-4 with 9:18 to play against Miami, Mendoza tucked the ball and ran upfield for a 12-yard touchdown.

“He lowered his shoulder and ran through the guy for a touchdown,” Tucker said. “So that shows the kind of guy we’re getting and we’re very excited about that. … 

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“When I put it to him, I feel like there’s nothing that he can’t do.”

Mendoza’s preseason play was up-and-down as he completed 25-of-45 pass attempts for 240 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions while taking four sacks.

How will he look with the Raiders’ starting lineup after running the scout-team offense in recent months?

“I haven’t really got too much reps with him, but just whenever they’re pulling up tape or whatever, he’s just making great throws over and over,” running back Ashton Jeanty said. “Accurate, precise, going through his reads. So giving the defense a good look week in and week out over there.”

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Spytek praised Mendoza this week as having “passed every test,” insisting the Raiders’ trade of Cousins “in no way signifies that we are punting on this season.”

But perhaps the Raiders will measure progress in the coming weeks based not only off game results but also on the development of a young core individually and in concert. How will Kubiak’s impressive play-calling look with his new quarterback? Will teammates step up to rally around Mendoza?

No one expects a mistake-free rest of the season.

But one NFC talent evaluator who scouted Mendoza in the preseason pointed to his 35 college starts and 1,008 college pass attempts as indications that Mendoza may transition smoothly.

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“These older prospects that have seen a lot of ball, I feel once they start acclimating to the speed of the game, can take off quickly,” the evaluator told Yahoo Sports. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him do really well.”

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com