Raiders Analyst Kirk Morrison: What It'll Take for Fernando Mendoza to Win QB1 job

Kirk Morrison opened the Raiders' schedule release expecting to find his team on a marquee night. He found nothing.

"My phone was buzzing," Morrison said. "When the Raiders schedule was released, I went through the schedule like, oh Raiders, here we go. Where we at?"

He took the long way through the realization.

"You look at all the Monday nights," Morrison said. "Hold up. Oh, no, no, okay, they messed up. They ain't no money. I know they got us on a Thursday. What, Amazon? Is this the right schedule?"

The verdict was unanimous and disappointing.

"No primetime game," Morrison said. "Zero. Zero. 0.0."

Morrison turned the slight into a marketing strategy. He posted to X immediately.

"I tweeted this yesterday," Morrison said. "When you look at the Raiders schedule, and you realize that this season all you need is Fox and CBS. I can cancel my subscriptions to Netflix, Peacock and Amazon Prime."

The framing he is leaning into for the year is the underdog year. The road-trip year. Everything earned, nothing given.

The bigger Raiders question is who plays quarterback, and when. Morrison did not stake himself to either candidate at the expense of the other. He pointed to two natural inflection points on the calendar for any quarterback change.

"The times that you make changes at the quarterback position are usually when? Number one, always, the bye week," Morrison said. "All right, give him an extra week of work, name him the starter, he'll have the whole bye week, and then he'll have the next week of preparation, then you start him after the bye week."

The other natural inflection, Morrison said, is the international slate. The Raiders are not playing one this season, so that lever is off the table.

The honest read for now is that Kirk Cousins has the lead in the room.

"Right now let's say the leader in the clubhouse is Kirk Cousins," Morrison said. "He would be the leader in the clubhouse to be the starting quarterback for the Las Vegas Raiders. Why? Because he's got the experience. He's started playoff games, won playoff games. He's done things in this league that Fernando has not done yet."

Morrison was firm that the choice does not betray the future of the franchise.

"That doesn't take away from the future, which is Fernando Mendoza," Morrison said. "And I get it, hey, you drafted him number one overall, he should be ready."

The history Morrison reached for was Patrick Mahomes.

"A lot of times people point to where, look at Patrick Mahomes, he sat the whole year," Morrison said. "Well, the reason why he sat the whole year is cuz Alex Smith had the Chiefs off to a great start that year, by the way. I believe they were like four and two or five and 0. No one's talking about the backup quarterback when your team is successful."

Morrison's veteran's view is that quarterbacks change because teams lose, not because timelines say so.

"Sometimes that quarterback may not be ready for what it takes to be a franchise quarterback in the National Football League," Morrison said. "Fernando can now ease his way into that position of not only leadership, production, but what it takes to be a true professional."

The schedule lays out 12 Sundays in a row before a Week 13 bye and four games to close. That bye is the spot Morrison has circled.