Pick: Fernando Mendoza, QB, Indiana<\/p>\n
Analysis: “I feel more confident Mendoza will go first overall than I do that he’ll be a Raider. It’s early in the evaluation process, but on the field, talent-wise, the distance between Mendoza and the next QB in this year’s class in my model was the biggest I’ve seen in at least the past eight seasons (since I have modeled in the way I do now). Given the amount of cap space AND needs that the Raiders have, the franchise might be better off trying to trade the pick for a huge haul. Given the market-resetting trade the Colts offered the Jets to acquire CB Sauce Gardner, can you imagine what might be possible for a 1.01 QB now? If a bounty like that is out there, it’s at least worth the Raiders’ consideration.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pick: Fernando Mendoza, QB, Indiana Analysis: “I feel more confident Mendoza will go first overall than I do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[34345,19,7,268,269,1744,393,2455,2454,270,64888,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-746054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-2026-draft","9":"tag-draft","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-home-centerpiece","12":"tag-home-latest-stories","13":"tag-las-vegas","14":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","15":"tag-lasvegas","16":"tag-lasvegasraiders","17":"tag-news-draft","18":"tag-news-mock-draft-tracker","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116055150923560750","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}