If there were any Fernando Mendoza doubters left, they are now vanquished after the Indiana quarterback posted a performance for the ages on Friday night.
In the Peach Bowl, Mendoza dominated Oregon en route to a 56-22 victory, which puts Indiana in the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Mendoza, who showed he can make all the throws, also cemented himself as the top quarterback in the 2026 NFL draft class (assuming he declares) by outperforming Dante Moore.
Mendoza finished the game completing 17-of-20 passes for 177 yards and five scores to zero interceptions. We'd like to point out that the Indiana signal-caller threw more touchdowns than incompletions in this contest.
While that's rare for any quarterback to do, Mendoza has made it a regular occurrence in 2025, and he has done so at a historic rate.
According to Dave Revsine of the Big Ten Network, Mendoza has thrown for more touchdowns than incompletions in a game a whopping five times this season.
No other quarterback this century has done that more than twice, which just further cements Mendoza as a special talent at the quarterback position.
"This is Fernando Mendoza’s 5th game this year with more TD’s than incompletions," Revsine wrote. "No other QB in college football has done that more than twice this century."
Again, we're still waiting for Mendoza to declare for the 2026 NFL draft, a decision that will come down once Indiana's season ends.
But if he does declare, the Las Vegas Raiders are almost certainly going to take him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.
The Raiders have had a disastrous situation at quarterback for years now and the franchise desperately needs a long-term answer in order to move forward.
Whether or not Mendoza proves to be the guy who can finally end the misery in Las Vegas remains to be seen, but he's going to get an opportunity to do so if he declares for the 2026 NFL draft.
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