Kirk Cousins is someone Fernando Mendoza has looked up to for quite some time. In a few days, the two quarterbacks could become teammates on the Raiders as long as Las Vegas sticks to its projected game plan at the NFL draft and selects the reigning Heisman winner first overall.
After being released by the Falcons at the start of the league year, the Raiders scooped Cousins up so he could reunite with his former Vikings offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak, who is the new head coach in Las Vegas. The Raiders were in need of a veteran quarterback to join the roster after trading Geno Smith following a disappointing 4–13 2025 season.
This move seemed to excite Mendoza since he has admired Cousins from afar since he began his college career at California in 2022. The upcoming rookie spoke with Kay Adams on her show on Monday and detailed what it was like meeting Cousins for the first time at the Raiders’ facility. He also explained why he’s so excited to “hopefully” be teammates with Cousins.
“He was there in the building, I was able to say hi to him,” Mendoza said on Up & Adams. “Someone who has a very similar play sound as me. I was able to watch all of his clips from the Minnesota Vikings—funny enough while I was at Berkeley, I just watched him to learn from his game, the way that he reads defenses, his footwork. To be able to have this full circle moment, someone that I’ve studied to potentially have the opportunity to play with, someone who is a man of God, who’s very cerebral and has had so much success throughout his entire career, would be an absolute blessing.
“Whatever nuggets he would want to give or something to learn, I would take in and emulate in my own game. Hopefully I can be teammates with him. He’s not only a great player, he’s a great leader of men.”
While the 37-year-old Cousins will likely serve as the backup quarterback in Las Vegas, there’s a good chance he could start the season as QB1 if Kubiak and general manager John Spytek don’t think Mendoza’s ready by Week 1. The organization has reiterated that the “best guy” will be named the starter at the beginning of the season, with the hope that Mendoza will take over as QB1 at some point, if not right away.
Regardless, Cousins is expected to be a great mentor for Mendoza, and it helps that the Indiana quarterback already knows and understands Cousins’s game so well just from studying him over the years. They won’t have a ton of catching up to do, by any means.
What Kirk Cousins has said about working with Fernando Mendoza
Earlier this month Cousins appeared on Good Morning Football and spoke about potentially teaming up with Mendoza for the 2026 season.
“I do think Fernando is going to be a great addition to our team, I think he’s going to have a future in this league,” Cousins said. “I have no problem being a voice in the room to help out him to the degree that I can. … I think he’ll be a great addition to the room. I was even telling him how much success he had throwing back shoulders at IU that I’d like to learn a little bit from him on how to throw a good back shoulder. It will be a noisy quarterback room, we’ll all be helping each other and we’ll all be pulling in the same direction.”
After Cousins landed with the Raiders, comments he made in February on the This is Football podcast with Kevin Clark about quarterback development within an organization resurfaced. These comments seem pretty fitting to the situation Mendoza and Cousins could find themselves in this upcoming season.
“I do think there was a time when Aaron Rodgers got drafted and sat for three years. Carson Palmer got drafted and sat for a year,” Cousins told Clark. “But there have been teams that have said that was the plan, and then Week 4, 5, 6, the guy is playing. I also think there was a time when coaches stuck around, when a quarterback learned a system and played in that system for most of the career. I’ve had nine play-callers in my career. … The turnover as both coaches and teammates makes it really hard because it is such a team game. The position of quarterback requires that continuity around you that you just don’t have anymore.
“When you’re asking a talented player to rewire his brain and do something different, he’s not gonna be the same talented player because he’s going to be a step slow and he’s gonna be learning and thinking again,” Cousins continued. “You want to take the thinking out of it. The more you can be a Tom Brady or a Drew Brees who’s been in the same system for 15 years, the better the player you’re gonna get.”
Working with someone like Cousins who has been through plenty of ups and downs in his NFL career will likely turn out to be beneficial for Mendoza and the Raiders organization. We’ll get confirmation of that in just a few days when the Raiders officially make their No. 1 draft pick.
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MADISON WILLIAMS
Madison Williams is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated, where she specializes in tennis but covers a wide range of sports from a national perspective. Before joining SI in 2022, Williams worked at The Sporting News. Having graduated from Augustana College, she completed a master’s in sports media at Northwestern University.
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