The Indiana Hoosiers football team is having what could be their best season in school history, and at the forefront of that success is Heisman candidate Fernando Mendoza.
Come the NFL Draft this coming April, NFL executives and scouts also believe he might be the No. 1 overall pick.ESPN conducts a poll every few months among a select group of execs and scouts to determine who they believe is the QB1 in the 2026 NFL Draft, and the list has changed drastically in just six weeks.
Their new poll, released earlier today, has three players, including Mendoza, who didn’t factor into their initial ranking as the top trio on the board. Mendoza received 13 of the 25 votes as the best quarterback heading into the Pittsburgh draft. Behind him, Oregon’s Dante Moore was picked six times. Rounding out the players to get picked more than once, Alabama’s Ty Simpson was selected three times as QB1.
Other quarterbacks to get one vote were South Carolina’s physical powerhouse LaNorris Sellers, Oklahoma’s crafty John Mateer, and a surprise in the form of Cincinnati‘s Brendan Sorsby.
Sorsby, a riser, is a big-bodied, wrecking ball of a quarterback that has put up strong numbers for the Bearcats this season. Not on the radar coming into the college season or even through the first month, Sorsby has a chance in the final few games of the season to get himself a chance to move into a first or second round position.
For Mendoza, Saturday was a day of highs and lows, as he had his weakest overall game of the season against the Penn State Nittany Lions, but came up with a heroic last-minute drive to win the game. The poise he had against a Penn State defensive line that was in his face every single play, and to deliver in the red zone with possibly the catch of the year to Omar Cooper Jr., is why many believe he could be the first name called in April.