Tom Brady’s influence is inching closer to the Las Vegas Raiders—but landing his protégé could bring as much tension as promise.
Fernando Mendoza is about to live every football kid’s dream. Heisman Trophy winner. National champion. First overall pick. And now, apparently, daily access to the greatest quarterback who ever played the game.
That last part is where it gets interesting.
Mendoza was refreshingly honest about what this whole situation actually looks like when he appeared on the Rich Eisen Show. “It will not be like I envisioned it, us being best friends,” he said. “It will be cool, and I want to be pushed, to be the best quarterback that I can become.”
Credit the kid for keeping it real. Most 22-year-olds would have smiled and said exactly what the room wanted to hear. Mendoza said the quiet part out loud: having your idol become your boss is a little weird.
Here’s the thought-provoking part, though. Brady as a mentor is one of the greatest gifts a young quarterback could receive. Brady as an executive, watching every decision you make up close, grading your footwork, your reads and your poise in January? That is a different kind of pressure entirely.
More Las Vegas Raiders content
- A pitfall that John Spytek and Co. must avoid on draft night
- Estimating how many games Kirk Cousins will play
- Wide receiver options that fit Klint Kubiak’s offense
- Phase 2 of the offseason is underway for the Raiders
Mendoza has studied Brady’s game for years. He knows the work ethic, the obsessiveness, the impossibly high standard Brady held everyone around him to. And now that standard is his problem to live up to, every single day, with the man himself watching from the building.
That is not a knock on the setup. If anything, it is kind of beautiful. The Raiders have stumbled into something genuinely rare, a franchise quarterback who already idolizes the man responsible for his development. Mendoza is not going to roll his eyes when Brady pushes him. He is going to run through a wall. But history is full of quarterbacks who had every resource, every advantage and every reason to succeed and still needed time to figure it out, and Brady himself was no different.
Mendoza is talented, driven and clearly self-aware. Las Vegas has not had a reason to feel this good about a quarterback in a very long time.
Just remember: even the best mentors cannot hand anyone greatness.
Mendoza still has to go take it.
*Top Photo: Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire