{"id":278470,"date":"2026-04-23T20:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/?p=278470"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:11:10","slug":"las-vegas-raiders-select-qb-fernando-mendoza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2026\/04\/23\/las-vegas-raiders-select-qb-fernando-mendoza\/","title":{"rendered":"Las Vegas Raiders Select QB Fernando Mendoza"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Las Vegas Raiders have their quarterback of the future, as the team used the first-overall pick<\/a> in the 2026 NFL Draft on Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza<\/a>. Mendoza, a redshirt Junior, is coming off a dominant campaign where he completed 72% of his passes for 3,535 yards, 41 touchdowns, and just six interceptions.<\/p>\n

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Las Vegas Raiders Select Fernando Mendoza With First-Overall Pick<\/h2>\n

This pick was a long time coming, and anyone who even partially follows the NFL Draft knew the Raiders were going to select Fernando Mendoza. Vegas earned the first-overall pick following the disastrous Pete Carroll Era<\/a>, and they needed a quarterback after the Geno Smith experiment did not pan out. Mendoza was the consensus top option on the board, and just about everyone knew Vegas wouldn’t need much time to make their decision.<\/p>\n

Mendoza set the world on fire last year, putting up video game-like numbers while winning the Heisman, earning First-Team All-American honors, and countless other awards. However, that doesn’t mean he’ll start right away. The Raiders traded Smith prior to the draft, but they spent decent money to bring in Kirk Cousins<\/a>. Cousins is not the player he once was, but he’s still a solid short-term option at this stage in his career. If Mendoza needs time to develop, Cousins is more than capable of keeping the ship afloat in the short term.<\/p>\n

The Indiana product joins a Las Vegas Raiders team in the midst of another rebuild. After helping guide the Seattle Seahawks to a Super Bowl victory<\/a>, first-year head coach Klint Kubiak now faces the difficult task of building a contender in arguably the league’s toughest division. The Kansas City Chiefs, Denver Broncos, and Los Angeles Chargers all have legitimate playoff hopes with quarterbacks capable of leading their respective teams on deep playoff runs. Vegas might not be ready to compete for a championship, but Mendoza will help turn this ship around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After months of pre-draft buildup, the Las Vegas Raiders have officially selected quarterback Fernando Mendoza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":278488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":true,"sfio_embed_code":"<\/smartframe-embed>","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,17,1647],"tags":[33710,34165],"class_list":["post-278470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl-news","category-raiders","category-nfl-draft","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-las-vegas-raiders-draft"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278816,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278470\/revisions\/278816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}