Seven quarterbacks in three years. Seven. You could staff a Pop Warner league with the bodies Las Vegas has burned through since Derek Carr cleaned out his locker.
Stidham. Garoppolo. Hoyer. O’Connell. Minshew. Ridder. Geno Smith. That’s not a depth chart — that’s a support group.
Three days from now, the Raiders walk up to the podium at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh and say Fernando Mendoza’s name out loud. Barring an alien abduction or a classically cursed Raiders-brain trade-down scenario, that’s what happens. Every major mock draft on the planet agrees. The Raiders have the first overall pick for the first time since 2007, and there’s one obvious use for it.
Mendoza will be watching from Miami with his family. Adam Schefter reported that the Raiders also locked up the bridge situation with Kirk Cousins, who reunites with HC Klint Kubiak and gets $20M guaranteed to essentially be the adult supervision while Mendoza learns the offense.
Projected No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza has informed the NFL that he is not planning to attend the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh this month, per sources. Mendoza wants to share the draft experience with his family in Miami. pic.twitter.com/ApUc7UmIDX
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 7, 2026
That part — Mendoza at home in Miami, not walking the stage — tells you something about how calm and settled this all feels. He’s not doing the theater. He knows where he’s going.
The credentials are real, by the way. This isn’t a “best available in a weak year” cope situation where you squint and convince yourself. Mendoza went 16-0 at Indiana, won the Heisman, won the national championship, beat Alabama, beat Oregon, and closed out Miami 27-21 in the title game. He threw 41 touchdowns against 6 interceptions. His adjusted completion percentage was 79.2%. His red zone numbers — 27 touchdowns inside the 20 with zero interceptions — are the kind of stat that makes NFL offensive coordinators write his name on a napkin and put it in their pocket.
The honest scouting take, per Dane Brugler at The Athletic, is that Mendoza isn’t the level of prospect Caleb Williams or Drake Maye were coming out of 2024 — this QB class is thinner — but that his strengths translate genuinely well to the pro game, and if the Raiders believe he’s a top-15 QB, he’s worth the pick. That’s the actual honest framing. Not “generational talent,” not “certain bust.” A legitimate franchise quarterback in a year that doesn’t have a Caleb Williams. That’s what’s available.
The pocket-on-the-move stuff is a concern. Under pressure, his completion percentage dropped to 50%. He ran almost exclusively out of shotgun at Indiana — under center is going to be a real adjustment. The Raiders are betting that Kubiak’s offense smooths those edges before they matter.
Kirk Cousins — who, per his own words, has “more football behind him than ahead of him” — is there to make sure the edges don’t kill them in year one.
That’s the plan. And it’s actually not a bad one. Sign the credible veteran who knows the coach. Draft the kid. Let the kid watch and learn. Give him the new center (Tyler Linderbaum, who just signed the largest center contract in NFL history) and build out the offensive line. Don’t throw him to the wolves on Week 1.
The question isn’t whether the plan is good on paper. Of course it is.
The question is whether you believe the Raiders can execute any QB plan without it collapsing into a Desmond Ridder emergency start on a Monday night in November.
They paid Garoppolo and watched him get hurt. They gave O’Connell a real shot and watched him slide to QB3 behind Geno Smith. Geno Smith. Pete Carroll was fired after one year. The 2025 season was described, generously, as “miserable.” These are the same decision-makers now standing at the podium with the first pick in the draft.
Two-thirds of Raiders fans in mock draft simulations pick Mendoza at #1, per Pro Football Network’s simulator. The other third think you fix the offensive line first before handing a rookie a broken pocket and a prayer. That’s not an insane take after watching what this team has done to quarterbacks. The O-line was ranked last in the NFL last season.
What the skeptics have to reckon with: the Raiders didn’t just draft well, they built around the pick first. Linderbaum. Cousins. A coach who actually has a relationship with the bridge QB. That’s not nothing. It’s the first time in a while this organization has looked like it has a plan that extends beyond the current news cycle.
Raider Nation has earned the right to be cautious. They’ve been promised franchise quarterbacks before. They watched a solid, durable starter in Carr never quite break through. They watched the replacements come and go in waves. This cynicism is load-bearing.
But Mendoza dropped 41 touchdowns on a 16-0 team and didn’t throw a pick in the red zone all year. When they told him the Raiders were likely taking him first overall, he apparently reacted with the same calm he plays with. No theatrics. Just a guy who believes he’s supposed to be there.
Maybe that’s what this franchise has been missing. Maybe it’s just a narrative we tell ourselves until November.
Thursday in Pittsburgh, we find out.