ESPN Broadcast Offered Details on Fernando Mendoza that Tom Brady, Raiders are Bound to Love

The NFL draft is almost four months away, but the way things look on the first day of January is that Fernando Mendoza is going to be the first quarterback off the board, presumably to the Raiders.

The quarterback decision in Las Vegas will come down to who Tom Brady wants and the ESPN broadcast during Thursday’s game offered a detail on Mendoza that will be sure to get Brady’s attention.

Brady has always emphasized the mental side of playing quarterback and the importance of preparation.

Mendoza, it seems, is already preparing at a level many NFL quarterbacks haven’t matched.

During the second quarter of Thursday’s game, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit talked about Mendoza’s preparation and the work he puts into the mental aspect of playing the quarterback position in college.

“He would tell you a big part of his success this year has been the prep. He feels like he has the answers,” Herbstreit said before the broadcast went to sideline reporter Holly Rowe.

“He’s been working with a sports psychologist all year,” Rowe added.

“And he’s really worked lately on ‘I have the answers to the puzzle. I know where the puzzle pieces need to go.’ His preparation is legendary. Before he even got to Indiana, he asked for a sheet of every player’s name and a picture of them so that by the time he got to his very first meeting and his very first practice, he had memorized every single kid. So he stepped into the building knowing his teammates, being able to call them by their first names and the preparation is legendary, just like you said.”

If Mendoza’s traits sound familiar, it’s because Brady once talked about his “superpower” as a player, and his description of himself sounded a lot like what is being said now about Mendoza.

These were Brady’s comments last year on The Herd with Colin Cowherd, talking about preparing for the Chiefs in the Super Bowl…

“Friday night, I was just going through the film and I knew Kansas City’s defense better than they knew themselves,” Brady said. “I knew their body movements, the way their linebackers moved, the way their safeties moved – Tyrann Mathieu, Nick Sorensen, Charvarius Ward – I knew everything they were doing. I got on the field and I looked up as I got to the line of scrimmage and said, ‘OK, they’re blitzing.’ I was dealing with it right away. I walked up and I said, ‘OK, they’re going to bail to Cover 2.’ Ball was snapped, Cover 2.”

“It was like I had the answers to the test. That’s where I was great. That’s where my magic superpower was. It wasn’t how fast I could run. It was how fast I could diagnose what they were doing. What’s the special quality, what’s the internet speed of me as a quarterback? Fast as [expletive]. I was Starlink before Starlink.”

Given what he said about himself, it seems likely that Brady is destined to be smitten with Mendoza and the football qualities they seem to have in common.

x: @raidersbeat

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