Fernando Mendoza Camp Update — August 31: Five Drives With a Modified First Team
2026 NFL Season · Monday, Aug 31
Mendoza played five drives in the finale with what the Review-Journal calls a modified first-team offense, finishing seven of fourteen for fifty-seven yards with an interception. All three quarterbacks made the fifty-three, and Klint Kubiak declined to name a Week One starter.
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Fernando Mendoza got the longest look of any Raiders quarterback in Thursday's preseason finale — five drives, starting his outing with what Sam Gordon at the Las Vegas Review-Journal calls a modified first-team offense — and the line came out rough: seven of 14 for 57 yards, an interception on a high pass intended for Jalen Nailor, two sacks and five hits taken, per Gordon. On Gordon's accounting that is his second interception of the preseason, after the pick-six in Houston. The evening's order told its own story: Kirk Cousins started with the actual first unit and went eight of 11 for 51 yards on two field-goal drives against San Francisco's backup defense, and Aidan O'Connell didn't enter until the final minute of the third quarter.
Then cut day kept everybody. All three quarterbacks made the initial 53 — Cousins, Mendoza, O'Connell, with O'Connell retained for a fourth season — per Adam Hill at the Review-Journal. And here is the week's turn: last week's episode ended on Klint Kubiak calling Week One Cousins' job "to lose." He did not repeat it. Asked on Friday, the coach declined to name a starter at all — "We have three guys that are ready to play," with "hard decisions on who's one, who's two," per Hill — and no coach or front-office availability surfaced over cut weekend. The team site still frames Cousins as the favorite, per Levi Edwards at Raiders.com, and Kubiak's cut-day description of Mendoza's development was patient by design: "It's learning from Kirk's reps, from Aidan's reps. Very valuable for him to get all those reps," per Edwards.
Last week's watch items both answered: three quarterbacks survived, and the finale reps split veteran-first. For anyone hearing this fresh, the June read on the first overall pick was that the question was never talent but a door, and the tell is how Kubiak sequences the quarterbacks. The sequencing still says the veteran. The coach's words, a week after they said it out loud, stopped saying it. We'll pick this up when the Raiders show their hand.
_Data via nflverse._
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