{"id":859937,"date":"2026-04-08T00:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/859937\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T00:41:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:41:19","slug":"fernando-mendoza-refuses-to-attend-the-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/859937\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presumptive first pick of the draft, Indiana QB, Fernando Mendoza, will not attend the NFL Draft, and he has a good reason.<\/p>\n

He wants to share his draft experience with friends and family in Miami.<\/p>\n

Since Mendoza is a lock for the overall No. 1 pick, who will be going to the Las Vegas Raiders<\/a>, it makes sense he\u2019d want to stay home.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Over the years, we\u2019ve seen several quarterbacks have to sit through a draft for several rounds before they were drafted. Two players come to mind. Shedeur Sanders and Aaron Rodgers.<\/p>\n

It was torture for not only Sanders, but the rest of the audience to watch as he slipped round after round until the Cleveland Browns drafted him in the fifth round.<\/p>\n

Mel Kiper Jr. thought that Sanders should have gone higher, and it turned into a huge controversy, with Kiper calling out teams that didn\u2019t draft Sanders.<\/p>\n

We also had to watch an embarrassed Aaron Rodgers sit through several rounds of his draft before the Green Bay Packers picked him up.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Teams like his hometown favorite, the San Francisco 49ers, passed on the four-time NFL MVP.<\/p>\n

So it is understandable why Mendoza and others may skip this year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presumptive first pick of the draft, Indiana QB, Fernando Mendoza, will not attend the NFL Draft, and he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1586,54,7,345,117149,393,216,6,15,252,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-859937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-aaron-rodgers","9":"tag-cleveland-browns","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-green-bay-packers","12":"tag-indiana-qb","13":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","14":"tag-miami","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-nfl-draft","17":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","18":"tag-shedeur-sanders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859937","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=859937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}