Fernando Mendoza has no peers in the 2026 NFL draft class.
There will be no breathless debate about the top quarterback available in 2026, no Ryan Leaf-style uncertainty to Mendoza’s march to No. 1.
Mendoza is expected to become a Raider, and after that, NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah isn’t sure another quarterback should come off the board in the first round. Alabama’s Ty Simpson, the No. 2 quarterback in the class, is graded somewhere early in the second-round range by Jeremiah.
To find a comp for Mendoza, Jeremiah had to compare the Indiana star to the quarterbacks of the last three draft classes.
For example, Jeremiah would have taken Mendoza at No. 1 in 2023, ahead of Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud and Anthony Richardson, the quarterbacks taken by the Panthers, Texans and Colts in the top five.
"I would have him, just off the college grade, a tick above those guys," Jeremiah said.
Mendoza might have had to wait in 2024.
If he was a prospect in that quarterback-heavy class, the NFL Network analyst would have ranked the Indiana player fourth.
“The group we had a couple of years ago, those top three guys, for me it was Caleb (Williams) one, it was (Drake) Maye two, Jayden Daniels three, he would slot in behind those guys,” Jeremiah said. “But I think he’s excellent, I think he’s ready to go.”
If he’d come out a year ago, Jeremiah thinks the Titans would have been facing a difficult decision.
“I gave him the same grade that I gave Cam Ward,” Jeremiah said.
Jeremiah was referring to the overall grade he gives every draft prospect, rather than comparing Mendoza to Ward.
The two quarterbacks reached that level in very different ways.
“You could not be any more polar opposite as players,” Jeremiah said. “With Cam Ward, it was kind of the magic, the off-schedule magic that he had, to go along with just a loose, fluid, motion. … Whereas Mendoza is a little more robotic in his movement than Cam, but still has a strong arm. I think he does a really good job of protecting the football. Both of them excelled in the RPO game.”
Mendoza’s draft stock, like his Heisman Trophy candidacy, built over the course of Indiana’s undefeated run to the program’s first national title.
When Mendoza arrived in Bloomington, his draft stock was seen somewhere below a handful of other quarterbacks, but as the season progressed, every other quarterback fell down the draft boards while Mendoza rose.
A lot of the quarterbacks analysts were talking about last summer ended up deciding to stay in school.
But even halfway through the season, the NFL Network analyst remembers some skepticism about Mendoza’s NFL prospects.
“Talking to people early on, it was, ‘The Indiana offense, it’s RPOs, the ball’s out, it’s back shoulders and it’s not much else,’” Jeremiah said. “Then you go through and study them and watch all the third-and-7-plus throws he makes, and tight windows, and hanging in and taking big shots, showing his toughness. You look at him in the red zone, you look at him in key moments in big games, and I don’t know how you could have too much of a concern there.”
Mendoza kept ticking off the boxes, proving himself to the NFL with each big performance.
And the bigger the game, the more Mendoza proved that he has the intangibles that are often difficult for NFL evaluators to analyze.
“The best attribute that (Mendoza) has is his toughness,” Jeremiah said. “When you get drilled early in the game as he did a couple of times, and you don’t see any rattle to him at all, he just kind of locks back in, there’s a mental and physical toughness to him that’s going to serve him well.”
Mendoza is likely going to need it.
From the sounds of it, next week’s appearance at the NFL scouting combine will be the first big step in a draft process that will be more of a coronation than an evaluation, leading Mendoza to the Raiders and first-year head coach Klint Kubiak.
Jeremiah likes the idea of pairing Kubiak and Mendoza together.
Because he believes the Indiana quarterback stacks up there with the best the NFL Draft has offered over the past couple of seasons.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fernando Mendoza NFL draft: Indiana QB vs recent top-5 draft picks