INDIANAPOLIS — Moments after Fernando Mendoza arrived for his formal visit with the Raiders at the scouting combine this week, someone handed him a phone.
The voice that greeted him on the other end was familiar to anyone who’s been a football fan for the last few decades, let alone a college quarterback on the cusp of realizing his lifelong dream of playing in the NFL.
Only Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion and soon-to-be first ballot Hall of Famer, wasn’t just congratulating Mendoza on the fabulous season he just delivered while leading Indiana to the National Championship and winning the Heisman Trophy.
Nor was Brady offering obligatory advice to Mendoza as Mendoza began to realize his NFL aspirations.
Brady, the Raiders’ minority owner and de facto president of football operations, was quite literally welcoming Mendoza to the dark side.
No, Mendoza isn’t an official member of the Raiders quite yet. The draft evaluation process is just hitting high gear, and the Raiders will do all their due diligence over the next month or before determining who they will select first overall in the NFL draft.
That process will include fielding calls from multiple teams offering small fortunes to pry that pick away.
But it will all be moot come April 23rd when the Raiders hand their draft card to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and officially set their new course with Mendoza as the undisputed face of their franchise.
“He won a national championship, and that’s what you want,” new Raiders coach Klint Kubiak said this week about Mendoza. “You want a winner.”
Make no mistake, a relationship the Raiders hope extends into the next decade and beyond—a partnership they believe can lead to the highest levels of success in professional football—truly began the moment someone handed Mendoza the phone and told him the greatest quarterback of all time, and his future boss, wanted to say hello.
“That was very special to me,” Mendoza said Friday. “And I’m looking forward to meeting him in person, hopefully one day, and learn it from him.”
And eventually be tutored by the player Mendoza described as “the greatest quarterback of all time, by a wide margin.”
“To have the opportunity to be mentored by him, it would mean so much. Especially to learn, and I’m all about learning. It’s going to be a long journey, and to potentially have a mentor like that would be pretty impressive and pretty meaningful.”
It’s only a matter of time before that happens, of course, no matter what you hear from the pundits who are inflating Mendoza’s draft balloon or those poking holes in it.
Depending on who you ask, Mendoza is either the best player in the draft or simply the best quarterback among an otherwise thin quarterback class.
NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah has Mendoza as the top player on his board, describing him as a “very accurate thrower” and “insanely tough.”
ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky said this week that, eight games into his evaluation of Mendoza, he believes Alabama’s Ty Simpson is the superior prospect.
None of it matters. Mendoza is a lock to go to the Raiders.
That is the sense Jets general manager Darren Mougey gets during his frequent talks with Raiders general manager John Spytek, some of which have broached the possibility of the Jets trading up with the Raiders.
“I don’t think that’s happening,” Mougey said. “You can ask Spytek, though.”
It’s not happening.
As an NFL personnel executive put it this week, “Everyone is overthinking it for entertainment and content reasons. The Raiders need a starting quarterback, and he’s available. It doesn’t matter if he is the best or 10th-best player in the draft. It’s irrelevant.”
After wrapping up the call with Brady, Mendoza rolled up his sleeves with Spytek and Kubiak and got down to talking football.
As first impressions go, it could not have gone better.
“I would say that they’re very football savvy,” Mendoza said. “They’re very football savvy, which is great to see.”
It was all football from that point. And that was right up Mendoza’s alley.
“It was a fantastic interview,” Mendoza said. “We went over some of my previous plays, drew some plays on the board. I thought it was a great meeting.”
For all the great back-shoulder throws and clutch plays he made throughout the Hooisers’ magical run last season, Mendoza is nothing if not a football nerd who loves diving as deeply into the weeds of the game as possible, and who embraces all the dynamics of growing into a respected leader.
“You need equity, and you need two things to build equity,” Mendoza said. “One, you need to play well. And that’s where all my focus goes in football, football, football. If you want to lead, you’ve first got to play well. And then second, it’s having the respect of your teammates. Through your work ethic, through your leadership, through your tenacity, the way you respond to mistakes.”
That makes him a perfect fit for the Raiders, now led by Brady and the intel-driven leadership of Spytek and Kubiak.
Earlier this week, Spytek was asked what traits he looks for in a top quarterback. Without even mentioning Mendoza by name, Spytek literally described him.
“A leader, tough as hell,” Spytek said. “Somebody that loves to play football, maniacal preparer. Obviously, somebody that can throw the ball well, but I think just somebody that loves the game and will give everything for their teammates. think there’s a great humility and selflessness required to play that position at a high level.”
At one point, Kubiak drew up a play for Mendoza, and the soon-to-be coach and quarterback tandem broke it down together.
“They had their whole progression on how they teach the quarterbacks to play,” Mendoza said. “And it was very similar to how my Indiana progression was. I’m a very type-A guy, and they had all the details for each play. What to do if you get a problem with this play? What’s the progression? And that’s something that I really enjoy.”
It was just the beginning of what Mendoza and the Raiders believe will be a long relationship.
