Raiders QB Fernando Mendoza Is Already Opening Eyes…and Expanding Vocabularies

Fernando Mendoza has not played a regular season snap for the Las Vegas Raiders, and he is already a Top 10 storyline for Rich.

The first overall pick at quarterback has been the talk of rookie minicamp, and on The Rich Eisen Show, Rich tried to figure out how soon Mendoza could realistically take the job from Kirk Cousins.

The math, as Rich laid it out, is simple. Cousins is on the roster and healthy. The only way Mendoza starts Week 1 is if he beats Cousins out, or gets close enough that the entire building, players and coaches, agrees that delaying him serves no one.

"Kirk is here in case he gets hurt," Rich said. "But we've got to start getting the kid out there. No way he gets better sitting around. No time like the present."

What has people in Las Vegas excited is not just the arm. It is the operation. Mendoza is taking snaps under center, a big shift from his work at Indiana, and he is reportedly running through 25 to 50 snaps a night with the centers at the team hotel just to get the timing right.

"The offensive line here in the rookie camp has been phenomenal," Mendoza said. "The other quarterbacks are really in tune, but I need more work under center. It's great when we can be in the hotel getting 25 to 50 snaps each."

The under-center emphasis is pure Kubiak system, which on the show prompted a quick callback to Peyton Manning's late career conversion in Denver, where Gary Kubiak split the difference with the pistol formation on the way to a Super Bowl 50 title.

Mendoza also passed his first politics test. Asked about joining the rest of his Indiana national championship team at the White House, he checked the calendar, noted it appeared to fall on the first day of OTAs, and said he is at the bottom of the totem pool and cannot miss practice.

"I don't think that's a good look," Mendoza said. "I want to try to best serve my teammates."

The show gave him the Family Feud salute. Good answer.

The other twist of the segment was vocabulary. While describing rookie camp, Mendoza talked about coming together as an offense and a defense to have "coherent practices." The cast initially flagged it as a malaprop. The internet, and producer Smitch, came to the rescue. Cohere is in fact a verb, meaning to stick together physically, hold fast, or be logically consistent and united.

Rich rolled with it. "He's making me a better host," he said. "Never thought a Raiders quarterback would be teaching me a word."

For a franchise long associated with four-letter words and a famous line about studying the playbook by the light of a jukebox, having a first overall pick who hands his veteran teammates a vocabulary lesson, takes private snaps with the centers at night, and politely declines a White House visit because he has not earned it yet is, as Rich kept repeating, almost too good to be true.

So far.