Rich: What Fernando Mendoza’s Impressive Raiders Debut Means for Kirk Cousins’ QB1 Status

The first overall pick in the draft had to wait his turn in Las Vegas, and when Fernando Mendoza finally got on the field, he looked exactly like the player the Raiders thought they were taking.

Kirk Cousins went first and went five of six for 50 yards with a touchdown to Michael Mayer, with Brock Bowers not expected until Week 1. Then Mendoza came in and went 10 of 16 for 97 yards and a score across four drives.

The touchdown was the throw worth studying. Mendoza hit Jack Bech on a quick route over the middle, and NFL Network's Mike Rob, sitting next to Rich on the set, explained why that is harder than it looks. Pre-snap read, know where you are going, keep the defense from knowing where you are going, get your fingers on the laces and fire it accurately. He did all of it.

Not every drive was clean. On one, Mendoza held the ball far too long and took a hit. Take the good, take the bad.

What Mendoza did afterward may have been more revealing than anything he did in the pocket. "It was an invigorating experience where there's not many moments where you feel fully alive, and on the field is when you feel fully alive," he said, which is not a sentence many quarterbacks reach for. He credited his teammates with protecting him and slowing him down when the first drive got sped up on him.

Then came the self-scout, delivered drive by drive like a PowerPoint deck. First series he felt sped up. Second series they scored. Third series he missed a read. Fourth series they had something going and he missed a throw at the end. "I let my teammates down today," Mendoza said, about a preseason game in the middle of August. "But it's a growing experience."

The accountability is delightful and, unlike a lot of quarterback speak, it does not read as performance. So many Raiders quarterbacks over the years learned the playbook by the light of the jukebox. This one is the milk drinker, and his 14-year-old brother did a few minutes with the broadcast and sounded exactly the same.

Klint Kubiak was not handing out any jobs afterward. He saw an ascending player who commanded the huddle and got the play calls down, the same guy he sees in practice, and when asked directly he said the job is Kirk's to lose. That phrasing is its own kind of match to the fuse.

Cousins earned that standing honestly. Everybody who runs this offense, from the Shanahans to Sean McVay, pays fealty to Cousins because he runs it exactly the way they want it run. That is why Mike Shanahan, after a mountain of capital went into trading up for Robert Griffin III at No. 2, still sat in the draft room and took the kid out of Michigan State. Rich questioned it on draft night. Mike Mayock pushed back on the air and called it low-hanging fruit, which is where Rich learned not to argue with Mayock on live television.

Cousins is handling the rookie with the same light touch. "I just let him be," Cousins said. "I don't want to get in his way. I think he knows what he's doing." Mendoza is a great question asker, so Cousins waits to be asked, drops a nugget when it fits and otherwise tells him to go do his thing.

Here is the thing, though. Mendoza has an arm, a head and a heart, and the last first overall pick to throw a touchdown in his first preseason game was Baker Mayfield in 2018. Cousins is not going to want to give this up, and he should not have to give it up yet. Nobody in that building is calling anyone at 2:30 in the morning about their quarterback.