Fernando Mendoza

Looked like he knew every play our defense was calling.

And plus, we're playing a team that wasted their first round pick on Fernando Mendoza.

Well, that remains to be seen, but yeah.

Well, we gotta focus in on the positives.

Hey, it's Michelle Smallman, and coming up Wednesday, I'll ask Mel Kuyper Jr. if he was a Giants GM.

Would he draft Fernando Mendoza or roll with Jackson Dart when he joins us at 8.30 a.m.? It's on Sportsman Like, 6 a.m. Eastern, right here on ESPN Radio, ESPN2, and ESPNU.

That's, that's a fact.

Um, cause I honestly think Jeremiah Love deserved it last year over Mendoza.

Now I get it.

I have a little bit of a bias cause I don't like that school.

You know what I mean? Josh Hoover, you decide to go to Indiana.

After they just went undefeated, after they got the transfer on Fernando Mendoza, who won the Heisman, who was the first overall pick, So what do you do from there? Well, Josh Hoover, so far this season, completing almost 75% of his passes, throwing for 376 yards, eight touchdowns to zero interceptions, which was something I wanted to see how he handled.

Because last year, what was it, TCU? He had the propensity to put the ball in harm's way at times.

Now, yes, the competition, it's not been great.

I think that he has his limitations, yes.

At his age, is he going to have a rocket arm like Fernando Mendoza? No.

But at the same time, he managed the game well, and I thought that this is still his job.

He won the game today and looked good doing it.

I understand that.

Of course, they were able to turn turnovers into points, too, which is also a great sign.

And Kirk Cousins will start there, too, because, no, you're not going to Fernando Mendoza already.

For those of you who want that to happen sooner versus later.

But to me, that clock is just ticking.

It's just a matter of – behind the scenes, how Mendoza's kind of maturing, coming along, how the product on the field looks.

Obviously, we've talked about this so much, about the competitiveness.

Are they in these games? Are they knocking at the playoff division door? However far-fetched that might feel, if Kirk Cousins is the one helping them do that, then you're not moving on.

But today, 21-30, 1-60, Three touchdowns and two picks, better teams, it's just not good enough.

And so we'll keep just a close eye on this.

And it's just gonna be a constant, almost like a stock picker chart of how close we are to them pulling the trigger on Mendoza.

Cuz we just know he's lurking.

Okay.

I went with Jeremiah Love, Carnell Tate, then Fernando Mendoza because quarterbacks get loved even if they're bad.

I'm

worried about Jeremiah Love because they still got Algier and they still got Connor.

I know you wrote about Kirk Cousins.

We have a look at what Fernando Mendoza did in his day today, just kind of watching the game, taking it all in, what he was doing on the sideline, how he was acting, what he was like in the locker room.

Max Crosby, something that we'll get into on the way back in terms of he may not have been a Raider.

This may not have ever happened.

They want to establish a culture with John Spicek, with Clint Kubiak in his first year as head coach.

And, yeah, to that point, right, I mean, he – Made the most of his opportunities out of the situations there.

He was a big part of the featured offense, but all things considered, the totality of what he brings to the table, it makes sense why the Raiders wanted to lock him up as a longer-term part of this offense as a retool and eventually hand over the reins to Fernando Mendoza.

You have a reliable blocker, somebody that can go out and make plays in the pass game, and somebody that brings a physical presence and edge at that tight end spot.

They were like really bad teams who were only one win better than Or they were teams that were kind of like middle of the pack that were expected to make a jump and then didn't, make that jump i think everybody got really high on the returning production stuff because you saw michigan do it in 2023 with all of those guys coming back and so even though yes there was some misleading returning production with some lower level teams that were not as good you also looked at it and said okay but the higher level teams can do it right you had michigan win the national championship you had ohio state in 2024 win the national championship heck you could even say Indiana last year was similar to that because of all the guys at Kirk Cennetti.

hung on to from James Madison and brought with him D'Angelo Pons, Aiden Fisher, obviously Fernando Mendoza, not from James Madison, but still coming over, and just how old that team was in a lot of ways.

That was not necessarily the talking point going into the season, but it was one that you could kind of formulate there at the end.

But I think what we're learning is that a lot of these players, just because you remain in college for another year, does it mean that you've gotten all that much more extremely talented? Like, yes, experience does matter and it helps, but at the same time, if you are a player that you just are what you are, you come back for another year, honestly could hurt things more than improve things because you're not actually giving the young gun who's behind you the opportunity to develop and take the spot that maybe they should be taking at that point.