2026 NFL Draft: Inside the Superpower Driving Fernando Mendoza’s Ascent

INDIANAPOLIS — Fernando Mendoza has a plan. He’s the kind of person who has the answers to that confounding series of interview questions: Where do you see yourself in one year? In five years? And in 10? He is, after all, the guy who finished his business degree at Cal in just three years — before transferring to Indiana to win a national championship and the Heisman Trophy. He knows where he’s going. Because of that, as a quarterback, he also knows exactly where he’s going to place the football. When Mendoza joined the Hoosiers through the transfer portal, he got together with his pass-catchers last spring and summer. It wasn’t exactly a meet and greet. Rather, Mendoza schooled them on what he wanted when it came to routes, timing and hand placement. “He always puts the ball exactly where he wants it to be,” former Indiana tight end Riley Nowakowski said in Indianapolis last week. “You gotta get a little bit adjusted to that because you gotta figure out where he wants it to be and exactly where he wants you to be.” Exactitude is crucial in a game determined by, as Mendoza says, “small margins.” One-inch victories turn into one-point victories. And so it’s of the utmost importance for a quarterback to get on the same page with his pass-catchers — right away. “Chemistry is everything,” Mendoza said at the podium at the NFL Combine. “Throughout the season, we were able to build better chemistry from game one all the way through game 16. I think that was really shown by the back-shoulder balls. … Most of the balls we threw, especially in the latter half of the season, were on time. They’re accurate. There’s good anticipation and the receivers all made great catches.” Those throws were what made Mendoza so difficult to defend at the college level. They are what NFL evaluators might call his “superpower,” a common scouting term used to identify a prospect’s most salient quality. At first, I’ll admit that it struck me as underwhelming that Mendoza’s superpower might be back-shoulder throws rather than his arm talent or creativity. But the truth is, based on chemistry and timing with his pass-catchers, the back-shoulder throw is impossible to defend when executed properly. And so … what better superpower is there for a QB than one that renders his throws indefensible? Mendoza became famous for the back-shoulder throw at Indiana. But even at Cal, he knew that type of throw would be valuable, even if it wasn’t a throw that came naturally to him. “He was OK at it,” Jake Spavital, Mendoza’s offensive coordinator in 2023, told us last week. “We would practice those daily at Cal. I showed thousands of clips of back-shoulder throws, because that’s really what you do in the NFL. He started studying it, practicing it. And if he didn’t like the throw, he would work and work and work and work and work until he became so great at it.” That is more or less the story of Fernando Mendoza’s improbable rise. But there’s more. So much more. *** *** *** Mendoza had just one offer coming out of high school: Yale. That’s one heck of an offer, but it wasn’t the type he wanted from a power conference. “He was still going to all these camps and getting zero love. Nobody wanted this kid,” Danny Hernandez, Mendoza’s private QB coach, told me. Hernandez kept in touch with veteran NFL coach Bill Musgrave, who was Cal’s offensive coordinator in 2022. After striking out on a pair of top-end high school quarterbacks prospects, Musgrave finally showed up at Columbus High School in Miami to see Mendoza in person. Musgrave offered him a scholarship on the spot — despite Mendoza being the 140th-ranked QB prospect in the country. “That was a true ranking,” Mendoza said. “I was a raw prospect. I was terrible.” It should come as no surprise that Mendoza spent his first year in college sitting out. Then, in his redshirt freshman year, he was the team’s QB3. But not for long. As always, the dude had a plan. “[In 2023,] we would be up there scripting for practice and finalizing game plans, and he just wanted to be a fly on the wall. And that was really cool to see,” Mike Bloesch, run-game coordinator at North Texas told me. “At that time, I was [Cal’s] offensive line coach, and he’d come ask me about protections and run game. Then he’d walk into the tight end coach’s office and ask, ‘How are we coaching the tight ends on this route?’ And then he walked down to the receivers coach’s office. He just really did his due diligence, making the rounds.” There’s the old adage that a backup should prepare as if he’s the starter. But at the time, Mendoza was a QB3. And he was spending more time around the coaching staff than the starter and the backup. I, for one, have never heard of that. “I know. I know. That’s just kind of the way Fernando is wired,” Bloesch told me. “I don’t know that I’ve been around a guy that truly loves every part of football the way that he does. And nowadays, that’s a big deal.” It’s a particularly big deal in the NIL age, when college players prioritize their earning potential. Who doesn’t like getting paid as much as they can for their work? But certainly, NIL has shifted the culture of college football, which wasn’t necessarily all about the love of the game beforehand — but it did have more of that element. Mendoza has preserved that love for the game (and the beauty of college football itself). Still, there were some issues in those early starts at Cal, namely that he turned over the football at a high clip, which included 10 interceptions in his first nine games. There was plenty to clean up between his final start of his redshirt freshman year and his first start of his redshirt sophomore season. In those times of transition, Mendoza often leaned on Hernandez, the private QB coach. They would stay in touch during the regular season, with Mendoza regularly texting Hernandez — sometimes in the middle of the night — to ask for his take on a throw that went awry. Hernandez would have an answer, and Mendoza would carry on. Then the offseasons were about bigger changes — and leaps in development. They’d run through their throwing sessions — often including other quarterbacks — and Hernandez would offer feedback. At the end of the session, as the other players left Mendoza would head to the sideline to get on his phone. But it wasn’t like he was scrolling social media. “What he’d be doing on his phone is basically taking notes while it was fresh in his mind, straight from the session,” Hernandez told me. “So then he’d come up to me right after the session. He was like, ‘OK, these are things that I remember you telling me today. Of these four things that you were on me about today, what can I do when I get home?’ … He always had a game plan.” Despite all the work Mendoza did and all the progress he made, the Golden Bears did not make the commitment to start him entering his sophomore season. He was in an open competition to start 2024 against transfer QB Chandler Rogers. Mendoza won that competition, but the team’s decision to bring in a competitor didn’t sit well with Hernandez or Fernando Mendoza Sr. They were already thinking about where else Mendoza might land in 2025 — perhaps before the QB gave it any thought. “I think no matter what kind of season happens here, he’s gonna have to move on,” Hernandez remembered thinking. “So then he has the really good season, and I just said, ‘Hey, man, his stock has just improved tremendously.’ I think the combination of the stock improving [in 2024] and kind of the disrespect that Cal had been giving him, it kind of made sense that he should probably move on.” Mendoza was solid in 2024, finishing with 3,004 passing yards, 16 touchdowns and six interceptions. It wasn’t exactly the type of production that would land him in the first round of the NFL Draft — let alone the first-overall pick. But Indiana coach Curt Cignetti already had Alberto Mendoza, Fernando’s brother, on the team. When Cignetti dove into Fernando’s tape, the coach was one of many who offered him a scholarship. Spoiler alert: Mendoza chose Indiana. *** *** *** You know that conversation you have when you’re eating slow-burn spicy food? Somebody at the table got into the spicy dish, and they’re freaking out about it. So you try it. But it hasn’t quite hit you yet. So dive in for more. And you don’t know what the fuss is about — until you’re feeling that heat in the biggest way. That’s sort of what it’s like to watch Mendoza’s film at Indiana. The heat isn’t there right away. But as the season wears on, you start to understand what everyone is talking about. And at the end, you feel it. You understand the hype. First, you have to appreciate his progress as a prospect, even over the course of the year. Second, you have to appreciate his consistency and his relentless approach to doing things the right way, which showed up on Saturday for a perfect season. “I think he took a big jump, quite frankly, from the first game to the third and fourth game. He stepped up against Iowa. That was a hostile environment, and he made a couple wild throws,” Cignetti said on the Week 7 edition of “Big Noon Kickoff.” “He’s come a long way, and as much as he’s improved since he’s been here, he’s far from a finished product. His upside is unlimited.” Mendoza got there by working endlessly with his pass-catchers, from Omar Cooper Jr. to Elijah Sarratt to Charlie Becker to Nowakowski. He did it by doing what he did at Cal — logging long hours with the coaching staff, including Cignetti and QBs coach Chandler Whitmer. One of Mendoza’s favorite parts of the year was his study of NFL quarterbacks. He talks endlessly about how much he appreciates Tom Brady’s game. And there are the other obvious QBs Mendoza could study: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and the other game-wrecking talents. But Whitmer didn’t put any of those guys up in film study. Instead, he showed Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and Matthew Stafford. “It helped me learn a lot about the NFL game because you always see the highlights, but it was really interesting to see how they dealt with plays that didn’t go their way, when they needed to throw the ball away, or they needed to check it down, and I think that really helped my efficiency this year,” Mendoza said on “The Herd.” Mendoza kept building out his plan for what should go right — and for what could go wrong. “If there were 25 hours in a day, he’d spend all 25 preparing,” Cignetti said on the “Joel Klatt Show.” “He wants to be great, and he does everything he can to be great, and teammates love him.” Looking back at Mendoza’s 2025 season is staggering. He completed 91.3% of his passes and threw for five touchdowns against No. 9 Illinois in Week 4. He threw a key fourth-quarter touchdown to beat No. 3 Oregon on the road in Week 6. He led a last-minute touchdown drive against Penn State to preserve Indiana’s perfect record in Week 10. He threw for 222 yards to take down No. 1 Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game. Then he led Indiana on a history-making three-game run in the College Football Playoff. Overall, he threw for 3,535 passing yards, 41 touchdowns and six interceptions. He rushed for seven more touchdowns on the ground — including his run that won the national championship for Indiana. Mendoza helped Indiana go 16-0. He knocked off six teams with top-10 rankings. He won the Heisman. You’d think he would get cocky — or even just confident. But he sure seems to have stayed humble. At the NFL Combine, he got to talking about Cooper. “He helped make me this year,” Mendoza said. By all estimations, Mendoza worked tirelessly to make himself. He planned. He grinded. He converted. But if you ask him, it was everyone else. That’s not a bad guy to have as a team leader. *** *** *** If Mendoza looked at the Heisman odds in the week leading up to the final tally, he could plainly see that he was going run away with the vote. Perhaps getting the sense that he’d win something significant, he made plans — while in New York — to give back. This was the one accomplishment that wasn’t listed on his Heisman Campaign. For all the work Mendoza did to change the trajectory of Indiana’s football program, I’m not sure his accomplishments match a project that has spanned over the entirety of his college career. It’s his work with the National MS Society to fight Multiple Sclerosis. In Berkley, he’d partnered with La Burrita near the Cal campus to make the “Mendoza Burrito” to honor his mother and raise money for the National MS Society. Elsa Mendoza is a former University of Miami tennis player who has lived with MS for nearly two decades. Then in Bloomington, he and his brother, Alberto, did the same thing, working with BuffaLouie’s and Gable’s Bagels to create sandwiches to raise money and awareness for MS. “My mom means the world to me — she’s the most caring and positive person I know — and I’ll keep doing everything I can to support her and others living with MS,” Mendoza wrote on the landing page for his fundraiser. He and his brother had raised $349,795 at the time of publication. One of the things that follows Mendoza wherever he goes is this idea that he’s “authentic.” I’ll admit that capturing authenticity is difficult to do in the written word. His coaches and teammates will speak of his geeky-but-tough persona — his exuberant energy. On the football field. At practice. In the meeting room. It was most telling that Sarah Smith, the vice president of external relations at the National MS Society, kept coming back to Mendoza’s “authenticity.” “The power of his and the family’s authenticity is what has really blown us away internally here,” she said. “We’ve been able to build this trust with the family to really make a difference for something that Fernando’s really passionate about.” So let’s go back to the morning of the Heisman Trophy ceremony, when Mendoza was at an Adidas-sponsored charity event. He had staged a shopping spree at the Adidas flagship store for four families impacted by MS. “Some of the conversations you heard — there were 5- and 6-year-old little kids whose moms have MS,” Smith remembered. “And just talking to Fernando and him saying, ‘I know what you’re going through. My mom has MS.’ And just these kids came away with just this sparkle in their eyes, right? … It goes again, back to that authenticity. I think it is pretty rare these days.” After the end of the event, Smith was standing near a mother who had MS. “I’ve been feeling very lonely recently,” the woman told Smith. And after she met Mendoza? “I finally felt seen, and I felt not alone,” she said. *** *** *** The Las Vegas Raiders pick at No. 1 overall in the 2026 NFL Draft. Everyone knows who they’ll pick. Never mind that Brady, the team’s part-owner, has spoken highly of Mendoza. Never mind that Mendoza makes perfect sense to operate new head coach Klint Kubiak’s system. Never mind that Mendoza would be a sensational option to get a huge season out of star tight end Brock Bowers. Forget all that. Focus on this instead. This is what Raiders GM John Spytek said about what he’s looking for in a quarterback. “A leader. Tough as hell. Somebody that loves to play football. Maniacal preparer. Obviously, someone that can throw the ball well,” Spytek said at the combine. “I think just somebody the loves the game and will give everything for their teammates. He added: “There’s a great humility and selflessness required to play that position at the highest level.” I mean … come on. Fernando Mendoza has executed his plan to perfection. Now it’s the Raiders’ turn.