The Raiders Took Fernando Mendoza First Overall. He Has Not Played a Snap, and They Are 2-0.
Kirk Cousins has thrown three touchdowns in each of his first two starts. Every week he keeps doing it pushes the No. 1 pick's debut further away.
Las Vegas used the first overall pick of the 2026 draft on Fernando Mendoza and has not played him. That was always the plan — Kirk Cousins was signed specifically to run Klint Kubiak's offense until the rookie was ready — but plans of that kind normally survive about a month before the losses make them untenable. Instead the Raiders are 2-0 for the first time since 2021, and the quarterback who was supposed to be a placeholder is playing well enough that the placeholder framing has quietly stopped applying.
Useful next steps
The numbers are genuinely unusual rather than merely adequate. Cousins has thrown three touchdown passes in each of the first two games, making him the third quarterback aged thirty-eight or older to do that, after Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. He is also the ninth quarterback since 1950 to throw three or more touchdowns in each of his first two starts with a new team, and the second in the past decade. None of that is the statistical signature of a stopgap.
Whenever Fernando Mendoza takes over the starting QB job in Vegas, the offense could take another leap forward due to Mendoza's mobility and stronger arm. But there's no rush on that.— Dan Graziano, senior NFL national reporter, ESPN, in the Week 3 buzz column
Graziano's phrasing concedes both halves of the argument at once, which is why it is the most honest summary available. He is not saying Cousins is better than Mendoza will be — he explicitly says the offense improves when the rookie takes over. He is saying the reason to rush has evaporated. That is a defensible position when a team is winning, and it becomes less defensible the longer a first overall pick spends holding a clipboard, because the thing a rookie quarterback cannot get from the sideline is the experience of being bad in public and surviving it. The counter-case is that the current environment is precisely the wrong one for that education. Kubiak has already flagged the protection: "Our quarterback got hit too many times. He got hit 10 times yesterday, two sacks. So, we have to improve there." Handing a twenty-two-year-old to a line that surrendered ten hits in a single afternoon, with tight end Brock Bowers still working back from knee surgery, is not obviously developmental - though Graziano's own column argues the opposite, calling the Raiders excellent at keeping Cousins upright.
The pick, the veteran and the clock
Fernando Mendoza, first overall in 2026, listed on the active roster as a backup.
Three passing touchdowns in each of his first two starts.
Third quarterback aged 38 or older to do it, after Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.
The offense "could take another leap forward" with Mendoza — "but there's no rush on that."
On the protection: "He got hit 10 times yesterday, two sacks. So, we have to improve there."
2-0 for the first time since 2021.
What makes this a season-long argument rather than a weekly one is that nothing about it resolves. A loss does not settle it, because one loss does not end a 2-0 start. A win does not settle it either, because every win is another week Mendoza does not play, and the cost of that is invisible until next September. Kubiak has been unambiguous about the incumbent, praising Cousins as "phenomenal with the operations and leadership" and adding, "I can't say enough great things about No. 8." Head coaches say that about veterans they intend to keep playing. The genuine risk the Raiders are running is not that Cousins plays badly — it is that he plays well enough all season that the franchise reaches February having learned nothing about the player it spent the first overall pick on, and has to make a decision about him from the same information it had in April.
Winning is not usually a problem. Here it is at least a complication, and every three-touchdown afternoon from Cousins makes the complication larger.
Play Him Or Wait
The team is winning, the veteran is playing at a level nobody projected, and the offensive line surrendered ten hits in a single afternoon.
A first overall pick who never takes a snap arrives at next season as an unknown, and the franchise has to decide about him blind.
Nothing, honestly. That is the point — neither winning nor losing resolves it, which is why it runs all year.
Around the site
Sources: ESPN — NFL Week 3 buzz, Raiders.com — By the Numbers: defense and Cousins' efficiency in the Week 2 win, NFL.com — Raiders takeaways: Cousins went deep and the offense came alive