Raiders GM John Spytek inadvertently debunks one of the biggest knocks against future QB Fernando Mendoza
The Las Vegas Raiders know what they’re getting in rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza, regardless of whether he played under center a lot in college.
There’s been a lot of chatter lately about Fernando Mendoza. It’s that time of the offseason when we have nothing better to do, so we just start saying random things. This time, it’s calling Mendoza an “RPO merchant,” or talking about him not playing enough under center. It’s part of the pre-draft process for quarterbacks, unfortunately.
“People won’t say it, I will, Ty Simpson schematically is a better fit or marriage for what the Las Vegas Raiders would do under Klint Kubiak than Fernando Mendoza,” former NFL QB and now ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky recently said.
“Most of the things that he does, at least half of the things that he does from a scheme standpoint, are underneath the center… Fernando Mendoza took five snaps total from underneath the center in his college career.”
John Spytek proves that playing a lot under center doesn’t actually matter
Looking at it from a different angle, if you draft a quarterback based on schematic fit, it will never work for you. You draft your quarterback, and then build the scheme and team around him, and put him in the best situations to win. So, frankly, that doesn’t matter in this equation. Quarterbacks can learn how to play from under center. And, in the grand scheme of things, how much you play under center these days really doesn’t matter.
“It’s very much a shotgun game in college. …It’s different now,” Spytek said. “It’s not anything that you can’t work through. It’s just you have to acknowledge that we’re going to have to spend time with any of these young QBs, teaching them the center-quarterback exchange.”
As Spytek said, most college QBs aren’t playing from under center these days anyway. So, every quarterback these days is trying to learn to play under center. Not to mention, Mendoza played under center more at Cal in 2024 than he did at Indiana last season. It’s not like he has never played from under center. And, he made an effort to do it at his Pro Day just to kind of prove a point.
To provide context regarding under-center play, last season, Seattle executed 531 under-center plays, not including quarterback spikes and kneels, and 422 plays from shotgun, according to Sports Info Solutions. Seattle, therefore, ran more plays under center than from shotgun, which is not a universal practice among teams. For example, during the previous season, Cousins played 177 snaps under center and 443 from shotgun in Weeks 8-18. Mendoza will be required to take numerous under-center snaps, and Cousins can serve as a model for this transition.
Spytek’s comments reinforce the main point: pre-draft concerns about playing from under center are overstated. Teams just need to acknowledge this is part of a young quarterback’s transition. The Raiders will have time to help Mendoza make this adjustment, especially since he is expected to learn behind Kirk Cousins.
