INDIANAPOLIS
If leading Indiana to a national championship — in football — seems improbable, how about what Fernando Mendoza pulled off a few years prior?
As a rising high school senior who had been accepted into and committed to attending Yale, Mendoza spurned the Ivy League yet somehow (arguably) upgraded his choice of a business school when he instead opted to enroll at Cal-Berkeley.
The power-conference level of football, of course, factored into Mendoza’s plans. But the rigors of conquering Pac-12 and ACC defenses didn’t prevent Mendoza from speeding through earning a bachelor’s degree from the prestigious Berkeley Haas School of Business in just three years.
The graduate program at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business is no slouch of its own. But even as a man dubbed by none other than The Wall Street Journal as a “finance nerd,” Mendoza’s post-undergraduate studies in Bloomington focused not on data analysis or strategic leadership but moreso on breaking down defensive coverage schemes and recognizing receivers’ route trees.
Few can match the college resume of the 2025 college football season’s Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff MVP. But it’s not necessarily pure arm talent that makes Mendoza the locked-in presumed first name called when the NFL Draft gets underway April 23 in Pittsburgh.
It’s the beautifully detailed and analytical mind of the 6-foot-5, 236-pound quarterback who hails from Miami.
“He knows exactly what he’s looking for,” Indiana center Pat Coogan said of Mendoza’s demeanor during plays. “He knows the play calls inside and out. The preparation that he puts in allows him to be successful, which then gives us a chance to be successful, because he’s really the engine, right? It starts with him, and his ability to deliver messages and break the huddle with urgency and quickness was very impressive.”
Coming out of high school, Mendoza was a two-star recruit whose only FBS offer was from nearby FIU. His incredible ascension to backup as a freshman at Cal to 3,000-yard passer for the Golden Bears to ultimately authoring one of the great college football seasons in recent memory buoyed Mendoza to a player the Las Vegas Raiders are by all indications eager to make their franchise quarterback.
Gravitational pull
That the NFL’s official website labels Mendoza’s arm talent as “fairly average” is of no concern to a team that has Tom Brady as part of its ownership group. Brady, who is known to wield considerable pull in the Raiders’ football decision-making, is considered the greatest quarterback of all time despite arm strength commensurate with his status as a mere sixth-round draft pick.
“He’s somebody who just elevates everybody around him,” Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher said during the NFL Combine earlier this offseason. “He’s an unbelievable, obviously, talent, but just an amazing human being to be around. People gravitate towards him.”
Like most of the top NFL Draft analysts, the NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah has Mendoza as his No. 1-rated overall prospect after he led the nation in touchdown passes (41) and finished third in completion percentage (73.0%) in 2025. And though Jeremiah agrees with the consensus that Mendoza’s accuracy is elite, it’s not arm talent that most impresses Jeremiah most about Mendoza.
“I’d say it’s his toughness,” Jeremiah said during a conference call with media. “If you go through and look at all these great quarterbacks over the years, I’ve always harped on poise being a big part of it.”
Jeremiah said he once did a study looking at every quarterback inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in an effort to discover common traits that might bind them.
“You see all different sizes. You’ll see different arm strength. You’ll see different athleticism,” Jeremiah said. “But they all had a poise to them.
“And that also has to do with the toughness. When you get drilled early in the game, as (Mendoza) did a couple times, you don’t see any rattle to him at all. He just kind of locks back in. There’s kind of a mental and a physical toughness to him that I think is going to serve him well.”
Though since the end of the college football season — when Indiana became the first 16-0 team in 131 years — it has been something of a fait accompli that Mendoza would be the No. 1 overall draft pick, the Raiders performed due diligence.
During his 17-minute media availability at the combine, Las Vegas general manager John Spytek deftly avoided referencing Mendoza by name. But it wasn’t all that difficult to recognize Spytek was talking about Mendoza when he did oblige an answer to a question about what he believes an NFL franchise quarterback should be.
“A leader, tough as hell, somebody that loves to play football, maniacal preparer,” Spytek said.
“Obviously, somebody that can throw the ball well, but I think just somebody that loves the game and will give everything to their teammates, a selfless person, somebody that’s going to give their team everything that they got every time that they’re out there, prepare the right way, lead the right way.
“I think there’s a great humility and selflessness required to play that position at a high level.”
Building equity
It should come as no surprise Mendoza is smart enough to recognize that. Even with the pedigree as a presumed No. 1 overall pick, he doesn’t sound like a man leaving his ability to earn his future teammates’ respect to chance.
Mendoza is not even in the NFL yet but already is mapping out techniques with which to become an effective leader of men, some of whom will be a decade or more his senior.
“I believe with an NFL franchise to (earn leadership status), you need equity,” Mendoza said. “And you need two things to build equity.
“One, you need to play well. And that’s where all my focus goes. Football, football, football. If you want to lead, first you’ve got to play well. Second is having the respect of your teammates. Through your work ethic, through your leadership, through your tenacity, how you respond to mistakes. Those are all things I’m going to work on.”
It wasn’t the NFL, but Mendoza has already been through the process of earning new teammates’ respect. Just one year ago, he was a mere transfer from Cal — Mendoza was just the fourth-ranked transfer QB — joining a team with a charismatic coach that had just come off arguably its best season in the program’s 125-year-old history.
One of the few four-year players for Indiana in 2025, receiver Omar Cooper Jr. was one of many Hoosiers who said they knew they had their leader in Mendoza as quickly as the first spring practice last year.
“You could just tell once we started practicing,” said Cooper, himself a possible first-round pick, “how smart (Mendoza) is and then just how he was able to deliver the ball in certain coverages. If the window was really tight, he was still able to get it there. That was just something special.”
Tight end Riley Nowakowski joined Mendoza as part of Curt Cignetti’s 2025 transfer class. Nowakowski called Mendoza “my favorite quarterback I’ve played with in my life.”
And while Nowakowski — another draft prospect — noted that in part was because Mendoza “throws one of the prettiest balls I’ve even seen,” he also joined the chorus complimenting Mendoza’s preparation.
“He’s very particular,” Nowakowski said. “He’s very detailed in that way. That’s how he approaches everything — and that’s what makes him great.”