an interview on \u201cGood Morning Football,\u201d<\/a> Cousins shared that Mendoza was in Las Vegas this week for his pre-draft visit and the two quarterbacks had an opportunity to watch some film together.<\/p>\n\u201cHe had a great way about him,\u201d Cousins said. \u201cIt was good to just watch some tape together and talk ball. There will be a lot of that up ahead for us, so we\u2019ll be spending a lot of time together \u2014 meetings, practices, games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all kind of lean on each other in the quarterback room. It\u2019s really got to be a working force together, where we\u2019re all helping each other. It ought to be a noisy room, where we\u2019re all asking questions, all giving each other feedback on what we think. Those are the years when I\u2019ve had my best years, when the quarterback room has been a really strong room with great dialogue all year long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cousins was complimentary of Mendoza, and said he even asked Mendoza for some tips on throwing to the back shoulder. Cousins also spoke highly of the overall environment that the former Indiana quarterback will walk into in the NFL in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cFernando will be a great addition to our team,\u201d Cousins said. \u201c\u2026 He\u2019s going to have a great future in the league. I have no problem being a voice in the room to kind of help him, to the degree that I can. He\u2019s going to have great support all around him from the coaching staff, but to the degree that being able to watch a veteran quarterback go through his habits and routines and process, I think that can be a great asset for him \u2026 It\u2019ll be a noisy quarterback room. We\u2019ll all be helping each other and we\u2019ll all be pulling in the same direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cousins said he feels he still has some \u201cunfinished business on the field,\u201d saying his goals include winning division titles and playoff games and being \u201cthe one holding up the Lombardi at the end of the season.\u201d Before any of those goals can be reached, Cousins will have to earn the role as the starting quarterback, which is something he said he\u2019s looking forward to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to start, unless I\u2019m the best option,\u201d Cousins said. \u201cI told Klint (Kubiak) that. Best player should play. As long as that\u2019s the case, I have no qualms with however it plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Raiders present an intriguing opportunity for Cousins to start again. The organization hired Kubiak as its new head coach after he led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl victory in February as offensive coordinator. Cousins has some history with Kubiak, with the coach serving as the Minnesota Vikings\u2019 quarterbacks coach in 2019 and 2020, Cousins\u2019 second and third years in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Kubiak was named Minnesota\u2019s offensive coordinator. That season marks the only year of Cousins\u2019 career in which he threw for more than 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns while also throwing fewer than 10 interceptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably, objectively, had my best season in 2021 when Klint was calling plays,\u201d Cousins said. \u201cI think a large part of that was that he was in the quarterback room for two years prior to that. From his first day calling plays, he knew how I thought, how I felt about certain plays, what I was good with, what I wasn\u2019t good with, and I think that helped us be on the same page from the jump.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Klint\u2019s offense has a great identity to it. I think you saw that in Seattle this year, with the way they married the run and the pass, the way the play-action game and the bootleg game is fit into the system. There\u2019s a great identity there. I think it\u2019s an offense that makes sense, and it\u2019s a big reason why I wanted to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another thing that nudged Cousins to the Raiders was the perspective he got from Tom Brady, the Raiders\u2019 minority owner. Cousins said that Brady called him via FaceTime and talked about Brady\u2019s vision for the organization and whether Cousins would be a good fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got off the call, and I called my wife and said, \u2018That was a really life-giving call with Tom,\u2019 \u201d Cousins said. \u201cHe gets it. He\u2019s been where I\u2019ve been, and then some. He understands what it needs to look like, what it will look like, and I felt a shot in the arm after talking to him. I felt like that was a big nudge for me to come to Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Film sessions between Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Kirk Cousins and future Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza, the expected No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,1744,393,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":{"0":"post-861544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-las-vegas-raiders","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-las-vegas","10":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","11":"tag-lasvegas","12":"tag-lasvegasraiders","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-raiders"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116371088810431149","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861544","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=861544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}