“Now Is Not the Time” - Rich: Why the Raiders Should Stick with Cousins over Fernando Mendoza

The Raiders have lost four straight, they haven't won in a month, and the first overall pick is sitting on the bench. Every instinct says flip the switch. Rich isn't buying it, at least not yet.

It helps to remember why Kirk Cousins is in Las Vegas in the first place. When it was obvious the Raiders were taking Fernando Mendoza first overall, they signed Cousins, and Rich called it "a great move" at the time. It took the pressure off starting the kid from day one behind a revamped offensive line with weaponry that was questionable, and it gave Mendoza a veteran who could show him what it's like to be a professional. Rich also saw the two as cut from a very similar cloth, from personality to play style.

The conventional wisdom was always that it was a matter of when, not if. Week four, week five, week whatever. After a 3-0 start, the conversation disappeared. Now it's back, and Rich admits the logic: when a team needs a spark, the quickest way to get one is to replace the quarterback, especially with a first overall pick waiting.

Head coach Klint Kubiak didn't close the door after Sunday's fourth straight loss. "We're thinking about everything," he said, listing the red zone, the third quarter, "personnel, scheme," and adding, "we got to talk all about all of it." As the crew noted, everybody is going to throw a quarterback change into that box.

Rich pointed to Kurt Warner, who got his own tap on the shoulder when the Giants were 5-4 after drafting Eli Manning. It has been done before by a team above .500. And it's not all Cousins' fault. He leads the NFL in passing touchdowns with 16, including two more on Sunday, though only seven have come in the last four games after nine over the first three. Tre Tucker, meanwhile, set a career high with 12 targets and posted his second 100-yard receiving game of the year. The bigger problem against the Rams looked like the run defense, which got gashed.

Then there's how Cousins handled the question about his job. "If I'm not the best option, then I don't want to be out there either," he said. "I want our football team to have the best chance to win games." He added that "Fernando's done a great job and has a bright future ahead," and that he plans to "give him a great example to learn from until he does go out there eventually."

Rich called it a syllable-for-syllable, pitch-perfect answer. If Cousins had twitched in another direction, the quarterback room would have gotten awkward fast.

The real case is the calendar. Four of the next five are on the road, with trips to San Francisco, Denver and Cleveland and a home date with Seattle in the mix. Rich noted Seattle just shut down "a Mount Rushmore quarterback." After that comes a bye and a five-game closing stretch of the Chargers, Denver and Tennessee at home, then Arizona and Kansas City on the road.

That's where Rich sees the opening. Use the bye to ramp up, let Mendoza wet his beak over the final five, and by then a sagging record makes the move easier to sell to fans and veterans in the locker room. Throwing him into that road gauntlet now? "No, thanks. I don't think that's the best thing for the kid or the franchise."

He conceded there's no correct answer. Mendoza could swim in the deep end and turn into a winner, or he could get his you-know-what handed to him. Rich pointed out that Brock Purdy's first career start came against Tom Brady, though the pushback on set was that San Francisco was forced into that one.

The crew floated a trade too: Cousins still has value, maybe to a Philadelphia team that thinks its season is savable, leaving Mendoza, Aidan O'Connell and more draft capital. Moving a starting quarterback in the middle of the season drew skepticism on set. For now, Rich's verdict is in the title. Now is not the time.