How Soon Will We See Fernando Mendoza As the Raiders Starting QB??

Put a date on it. Fernando Mendoza will be the Raiders' starting quarterback by Halloween, and Rich does not think that is an overreaction at all.

The Jets game falls just after Halloween, which was raised as a technicality and waved off. Close enough counts.

What makes the timeline plausible is not the depth chart. It is the gap between how Mendoza carries himself and what he actually is. Right now the public version is all aw shucks, I'm the rookie, I'm one of 53, I'm here to serve my teammates and get better.

"I'm just a national champion Heisman Trophy winner of an undefeated team, just like Cam Newton was, just like Joe Burrow was," Rich said, doing the translation. "I'm number one overall just like those guys were also. I'm just a backup right now."

Every time that act shows up, the appetite grows for the other version, the one where he owns the ship.

Thursday night offered a preview and a reality check in the same sitting. The first drive was nice. The second and third drives were not, and he took an unnecessary hit along the way, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets faster and more difficult once the games count.

That is what Kirk Cousins is there for. Betting on an early handoff of the job means betting the veteran fails badly enough to force it, and there are already whispers attached to Cousins that his arm is good but not great and that he does not move around the way he once did. Meanwhile the first drive against the Arizona Cardinals went through a knife-through-hot-butter five of six, right down the field, with Michael Mayer the beneficiary because Brock Bowers is not going to sniff the field until week one against Miami.

The bigger argument is developmental, not situational. Sitting Mendoza the entire season creates a worse problem in year two, when a coaching staff has to walk in and announce that the wait is over.

"I do want to see him have ownership of it, like your QB1," Rich said. "You are the man. You are the full-time leader."

The case for that is written on his college tape. Mendoza took hits upon hits upon hits at Indiana, kept getting up, and kept winning games. Football hair on the chest, professionally speaking, is the next step, and it does not grow on the bench.

One preseason week was enough to remember why he went first overall. The rest is a question of how long the Raiders can stand to wait, and the answer here is not very long at all.