Colin Cowherd doesn’t miss many opportunities to bash the Raiders, and this week he shared why Fernando Mendoza is a top quarterback prospect in his mind, but not a good fit in Las Vegas.
Cowherd has raved about Mendoza for months, but on Monday he cited an obscure stat to argue that Mendoza would be better served on a team other than the Raiders.
“I’m going to listen to criticisms [on Mendoza]. I just don’t buy any of them, so far. Until today. This one feels legitimate,” Cowherd said on The Herd.
“There’s an NFL analyst who calls something ‘pressure to sack rate’ and how many negative plays you have, how long you hold the ball, and if you look at last year in the NFL who had a really high pressure to sack rate, it was Geno Smith, J.J. McCarthy and Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward. He has Mendoza’s pressure to sack rate the same as Justin Fields. And what have we said about Justin Fields? He doesn’t see the field very well, holds the ball too long. Now Justin Fields is hyper athletic, and he still has negative plays.”
“I look at Caleb Williams [in] his first year. He had all sorts of sacks and negative plays. Why would that be? Because his coach stunk,” Cowherd continued.
“So I don’t worry about Fernando Mendoza. I worry about the Raiders as his parent in this league. Bad O-line. Even if Klint Kubiak is a good coach, he’ll probably be the fourth best coach in his division, ownership is impulsive and ridiculously impatient. I don’t have a Mendoza issue. I have a Mendoza to the Raiders issue.”
As much as anything, it looks like Cowherd is just hedging his bet on Mendoza.
Cowherd is on record saying Mendoza is worthy of the no. 1 pick, but if Mendoza doesn’t play well for the Raiders, he can point to his statement about the team that drafted the Heisman-winning quarterback.
Cowherd called the Raiders “ridiculously impatient” in his monologue, but it’s worth noting that he was in agreement that Josh McDaniels was a failure in Las Vegas.
After McDaniels was fired, Cowherd criticized the Raiders for not hiring “smart people” and offered Pete Carroll (video on X below) as an example of the type of coach they should be looking to hire to replace McDaniels.
Following the firing of Antonio Pierce, Cowherd defended Pierce and said the Raiders shouldn’t have fired him. Maybe that’s the coach he thought didn’t get a fair shake in Las Vegas.
But if that’s the case, it’s worth remembering that Tom Brady was the driving force behind the Raiders’ decision to fire Pierce.
Cowherd has only ever praised Brady, but Pierce wasn’t the head coach Brady wanted to replace McDaniels in 2023, and it was no secret that Brady wanted Pierce out after one season.
The other coach that didn’t get a mulligan in his short time with the Raiders was interim HC Rich Bisaccia, and just about everyone wishes the team had given Bisaccia an opportunity to continue what Jon Gruden started.
Three years ago, Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter said the decision to fire Bisaccia is one that even Mark Davis regrets.
“I think Mark [Davis] has regretted not hiring Rich [Bisaccia]. I’m not guessing there. I have reason to believe that…,” Carpenter said on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast in 2023. “The problem was that Mark wanted to move on from [Mike] Mayock… and Mayock was so ‘We gotta hire Rich, we gotta hire Rich’ that he was like ‘Nope. Clean everybody out.’”
x: @raidersbeat
It’s pretty amazing to me how everybody and I mean everybody is missing the elephant in the room. 99% of this guy’s passes are inside 10 yards. From 100% of the shotgun.. Does anybody remember running backs running out of the shotgun in the NFL? Don’t have a lot of success? Let’s just clue and defenses to load the box and the corners to play press coverage.
Then we’ll have exactly what we’ve had for the last six years plus.
Check down Charley personified.
No one points this out because it’s patently false. It seems obvious to me that you’ve never watched a single Mendoza game.
I have.
Especially the championship game.
The stats don’t lie.
Do the math on completions and yards subtracting YAC. AND he averaged close to 200 yards a game WITH YAC.
And he has two pretty good receivers.
FACTS called lies are what?
Rhetoric from the collective fanboys.
I repeat, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Bearing in mind that we’re talking about a QB who just finished a perfect season, meaning he never lost a game, it seems clear to me that the established game plan was a success, regardless of the empty statistics that, taken individually as you are, are meaningless! If you had seen Mendoza play or if you had simply analyzed him or followed someone who knows how to analyze him (YouTube is full), you would have seen a QB who knows how to read defenses, who can throw deep when necessary, and who is always very accurate, both on long and short passes. That’s what the videos say if you don’t want to watch entire games. As for the rest, think what you want, but know that you’re talking bullshit.
College game versus professional game. You’re clueless.
Tell me how many 100% shotgun formation quarterbacks have won Super Bowls? Name one, 100% shotgun quarterback that had a running back that ran for 1000 yards?
You’ll learn like the rest. But you’ll have excuses instead of admitting what was right in front of you. Can throw deep when he needs to? Lol
Talk about talking out your underwear.
I have nothing else to add, anyone who has seen Mendoza’s videos knows you’re talking bullshit… that said, who am I to encourage you to make a fool of yourself and make it clear to everyone that you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about… you’re happy, everyone’s happy…
If Bisaccia was such a good head coaching prospect,how come he never got hired anywhere else,I’m sick of hearing what a big mistake it was to let him go.
How come? Well let me tell you how come. When he was with us, he had the players trust. He and Mayock were on the same page. Look what he’s done with special teams in Green Bay. Success.
There’s a lot of people that can do the job better than most, but never get a chance. If you played competitive sports, and we’re really good, and had no connections you’d understand this.
As interim, he had a winning record for us. And key players expressed their confidence in him as well. Blue chip players aren’t going to publicly put their neck out there for no good reason.
Its pretty ridiculous to project any sort of style of play or capability of players when there’s an entire coaching regime change and net new systems coming in.
The poor pass pro for Smith was a combo of a horrendously implemented blocking scheme under Kelly that left the linemen out of position and guessing, a significant number of starters games lost to injury, and a dubious OL coach selection.
Just like when Getsy was replaced, when Kelly was listed the blocking got overall better. System matters as much of more than talent, as we’ve seen proven two years in a row. When the same group of OL suddenly improve midseason right after an OC change, did they all just get more talented? Nope, system.
Kubiak is bringing a proven, top notch run blocking scheme to the Raiders. A strong run game makes pass blocking so much better, because it has the DL having to play run first. While the Raiders don’t exactly have 5 studs on the line, assuming healthy again they have 3 very good starters in Miller, JPJ and Parham. They have a boatload of cap to spend. Two more average or better starters along with the new system will make for a very different looking OL.
Which means any sort of projection of poor fit for Mendoza against last years completely irrelevant news, is just garbage reporting.
Did any of Kubiak’s offenses run exclusively out of the shotgun? No, they didn’t. Did any of Kubiak’s offenses have a quarterback that couldn’t put the ball down field? No, they weren’t.
Mendozzy completed less than 33% of his passes of more than 25 yards down field his entire college career not to mention, he threw less than 20 passes over 25 yards his entire college career.
Does this tell you anything? It should if you have a clue.
https://x.com/TheMarcJohnNFL/status/2024204340022694220?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2024204340022694220%7Ctwgr%5Eedae4ba01ad89a970c588adb08ea211fc1786cff%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.silverandblackpride.com%2Fnfl-draft%2F122621%2Flas-vegas-raiders-fernando-mendoza-klint-kubiak-nfl-draft
A little practical demonstration that dismantles your theories… not that it would take much, as I’ve been repeating for days, just having watched Mendoza’s games is enough to know that you’ve written a load of bullshit… I could go on for days…
It may be garbage reporting, but it’s arriving at a similar destination, albeit taking a rough side road to get there
If he’s known for bashing the Raiders why I even put his story on this site?
I used to like you Colin Coward. So what your saying is the Raiders can’t fix they’re offensive line, that wasn’t as bad as they looked. Ya know why, its bad coaching Coward.
Kubiak is putting together a pretty good coaching staff, and now the evaluation of players on the roster, and then free agency, and then the draft, I believe we have players on the roster and young good pieces in place, I believe we are about to see a big change in Vegas, we have been waiting a long time for this to happen, I also think media, podcasters across the country are talking s*** just to get hits, they got nothing else to talk about so why not talk about the Raiders, but right now they are blowing a lot of smoke cuz nobody knows what the Raiders are going to do it’s all speculation, and the trade talk about Crosby, let me remind you of the Cleo Mack trade to Chicago 2 first round picks a 3rd and 6th Chicago got Mac and a couple draft picks, our picks was Josh Jacob and Arnett who are no longer with the team they were traded to, Jacob was the money they didn’t want to pay so remember that trade turned out to be a bust
And Mendoza will be the first pick, he does fit the scheme of Kubiak, so all you naysayers, mouthpieces just keep talking the trash and getting your clicks
You are aware that Kubiak has never groomed, a rookie quarterback, right?
You also know that Kubiak’s pass tree only accounts for under 30% underneath, right?
I don’t make this shite up. But all of you certainly do. Because if you did your due diligence, you’d know the truth.
I just wonder what excuses you all make when he doesn’t make it as a pro.
Build an empire around him. Because if you don’t, you’re stuck with check down Charlie all over again.
If he weren’t the nice guy he seems, I’d say Mendoza screwed your girlfriend to continue this crusade against him… I won’t repeat that he just finished a perfect season in which he never lost and that alone would be enough to ruin all your theories because it’s clear that if you win games with certain plays there’s no reason to try others, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t know how to execute them… and to realize this, I repeat, just watch his games, both last year and the one at CAL… but it’s clear that you haven’t done it or if you have, you don’t understand… I’d ask you this question… Do you think Kubiak, who was effectively the most sought-after coordinator in the league after transforming the SEA offense, chose to come to the Raiders over all the other contenders, Raiders who have a terrible reputation and who according to your theories will remain in the lower reaches of the league… Don’t you realize on your own that he came mainly because he’ll have Mendoza as a QB? And do you think he’d come to Las Vegas, of all the other suitors, if he thought Mendoza couldn’t execute his schemes? But surely you know more than Kubiak and all of us combined…
It’s hard to argue with an empty cup. These Mendoza haters are fasf.
Anyone who views Colin Cowherd as a definitive voice on scouting is as delusional as the character he plays in studio.