The Raiders are all but guaranteed to take Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza with the first pick in the draft, but according to ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, the top quarterback in this year’s draft is Alabama’s Ty Simpson.
Orlovsky has been criticized for ranking Simpson ahead of Mendoza, but fellow draft analyst Todd McShay seemed to support Orlovsky this week, saying that Simpon’s game film was at least as good as Mendoza, but the sample size is much smaller.
“My eyes tell me Ty Simpson is every bit as good as, and in some ways better and more NFL ready, than Mendoza,” McShay said this week. “But history, and general managers that have to assess risk are saying Mendoza is the safer pick… That’s the debate.”
With Orlovsky and McShay in his corner, Simpson has two of the better-known draft analysts in the league comparing him favorably to Mendoza, but is
“Obviously, you can talk to different people, but I have not talked to anyone that has that [opinion],” Jeremiah said of the idea that some NFL teams prefer Simpson over Mendoza.
“That’s not saying that he’s saying anything untrue, he’s just talking to different folks, apparently, than the folks that I’ve been talking to. And that goes from the Raiders, and a bunch of other teams too. It wasn’t particularly close.”
Jeremiah also addressed the idea that Orlosky is being paid to promote Simpson.
“The whole balloon of like… it was an agency favor and all that kind of stuff. Well, I’m represented by the same agency and Ty Simpson is my 38th player and Fernando Mendoza is my no.1 overall player. That’s not how this whole thing works, so that was kind of silly to me,” Jeremiah said.
“Dan is a good friend of mine and long begore he went on TV and talked about this opinion, we had shard a lot of text messages back and forth. I share a different opinion than he does and so we had this conversation over texts probably a week ago and it ended up the last thing he said [was he] finished up all the tape and felt the way he felt. My advice to him was ‘If you’ve done all the work then you can be confident in your opinion and that’s what your job is… to give your opinion.'”
x: @raidersbeat
1. FERNANDO MENDOZA
36. MAX IHEANACHOR
67. DANI DENNIS-SUTTON
102. ANTONIO WILLIAMS
117. NICHOLAS SINGLETON
134. ZANE DURANT
175. TACARIO DAVIS
185. RED MURDOCK
208. BISHOP FITZGERALD
219. ERIC GENTRY
Daniel Jeremiah is right, the other two are just jealous the Raiders are going to get mendoza!
How many seasons is it going to take him to learn how to operate under center? THAT is Kubiak’s offense. 98% of it. The AFC west. This kid is no better than car. With the exception of having a better anticipation skills. But they hit a whole lot harder and faster in the NFL
Another first pick in the draft bust. Or six years down the road he’ll be a reclamation project for somebody else.
Jealous? Clueless.