Mendoza at No. 1: Raiders Land Their QB

The Raiders had not made the playoffs since 2021. Their previous five seasons — spanning three head coaches, two cities, and one stadium relocation — produced a franchise that had become a cautionary study in organizational instability. Mendoza changes the mathematics of patience. A franchise-caliber quarterback at No. 1 gives a team roughly four years of cost-controlled production before a second contract forces a financial reckoning. The Raiders, picking up Mendoza on a four-year rookie deal, have that runway. General Manager Tom Telesco described the selection as "the easy decision in a draft full of hard ones."

“Mendoza changes the mathematics of patience.”

The historical company is exclusive. Joe Burrow, who went No. 1 to Cincinnati in 2020 after winning the Heisman and a national title at LSU, is the most recent precedent — and he led the Bengals to a Super Bowl within two years. Mendoza joins Burrow and Newton as the only players in the common draft era to complete the triple. He also becomes the fifth Heisman winner drafted by the Raiders, joining Marcus Allen, Bo Jackson, Tim Brown, and Charles Woodson, a lineage that franchise historians were quick to note constitutes as strong a Heisman legacy as any team in the league.

The criticism of the pick was narrow but pointed. Several NFL evaluators questioned whether Mendoza's success was partly a product of Indiana's unusually clean pocket — the Hoosiers allowed the fewest pressures per dropback in the Big Ten in 2025 — and whether his decision-making under duress would hold at the professional level against pass rushers of an entirely different caliber. His Pro Day performance in March included eight dropped or deflected passes in a controlled setting that raised minor flags about ball placement at the intermediate level. The Raiders' offensive coaching staff reviewed the footage and publicly dismissed the concern, but the question will resurface the first time an NFL defensive end reaches Mendoza in a live-game situation.

Pittsburgh's draft stage set records of its own. Round 1 attendance broke the previous draft record at the venue, with over 250,000 fans across three days — a figure the NFL attributed partly to Mendoza's popularity in the Midwest and partly to Pittsburgh's decision to build the stage directly on the North Shore, framed by the Allegheny River. The city had never hosted the event before. By all accounts, it won't be the last time.

The 2026 class will be judged in three to four years, as it always is. The measure for Mendoza specifically is whether he can do what Burrow did: arrive in a struggling franchise, absorb the NFL's complexity quickly enough to win games in year two, and then build toward something lasting. The Raiders play their first preseason game on 8 August 2026 against the Los Angeles Chargers. That game will attract more attention to Las Vegas football than any non-playoff matchup the franchise has hosted in years.