{"id":780402,"date":"2026-02-27T18:24:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/780402\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T18:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T18:24:19","slug":"how-fernando-mendoza-just-credited-caleb-williams-for-becoming-national-champion-qb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/780402\/","title":{"rendered":"How Fernando Mendoza just credited Caleb Williams for becoming national champion QB"},"content":{"rendered":"

Undoubtedly, Fernando Mendoza<\/a>‘s brilliance propelled Indiana football<\/a> to an improbable undefeated season and a national championship<\/a>. In the process, he came away with the Heisman Trophy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the people he found inspiration<\/a> from was Chicago Bears<\/a> quarterback Caleb Williams<\/a>, per
Courtney Cronin of ESPN. Essentially, Mendoza credited Williams for coming back from early-season losses at USC and for coming through in the big moments, especially in those one-score games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe a lot of that experience of failing, coming up so short has helped me in this new run with Indiana whenever we’ve gone behind, we dug ourselves in a hole with Penn State, with Oregon, with Iowa and be able to learn from those failures and make those successes and then be able to help my teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mendoza was the catalyst behind a 73-yard drive<\/a> that culminated in Indiana’s 27-24 win over Penn State in November.<\/p>\n

Right now, Mendoza is waiting to see where he will end up in the 2026 NFL Draft<\/a>. Many are predicting the Las Vegas Raiders will select him.<\/p>\n

At USC, Williams came through in those last-minute situations. One of those came in 2022 against Notre Dame, in which he went 18-of-22 for 232 yards in a 38-27 win. A moment that led him to capture the Heisman Trophy.<\/p>\n

That dynamic has carried over with the Chicago Bears. Last November, he rushed for 17 yards into the endzone<\/a> that lifted the Bears over the New York Giants 24-20.<\/p>\n

In December, he engineered the 16-point comeback<\/a> against the Green Bay Packers, culminating in the 46-yard touchdown pass to DJ Moore. The Bears went on to win in OT 22-16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Undoubtedly, Fernando Mendoza‘s brilliance propelled Indiana football to an improbable undefeated season and a national championship. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1036,391,3619,7,26781,49,48,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-780402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-caleb-williams","9":"tag-chicago-bears","10":"tag-fernando-mendoza","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-indiana-football","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-football","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116143997798040375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780402","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=780402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}