Raiders Name No. 1 Pick Fernando Mendoza Their Starter for Sunday's Seahawks Debut

The Fernando Mendoza era in Las Vegas starts on Sunday, and it starts against the defending champions. The Raiders named the No. 1 overall pick their starting quarterback on Tuesday, a day after trading Kirk Cousins back to Minnesota for a 2027 third-round pick, and general manager John Spytek announced the move with the line that decided it: Mendoza “passed every test” since he walked into the building. His first NFL start comes at home against the Seattle Seahawks, the team that won the Super Bowl last season.

Why did the Raiders hand Mendoza the job now?

Because Minnesota made the decision for them. Spytek told reporters the team had to choose between going forward with Cousins over the last eight games or taking what the Vikings were offering, the Associated Press reports, and the Vikings called on Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after Carson Wentz posted an 8.9 passer rating in a 23-6 loss to Buffalo. The Raiders never shopped Cousins, Reuters reports, and they discussed the option with the 38-year-old before agreeing to the deal that sent him back to the franchise he led from 2018 through 2023.

The timing is earlier than planned but not a surprise. Cousins was signed in March as the explicit bridge, a one-year deal with a $20 million guarantee of which Atlanta picked up $8.7 million, the Associated Press reports, and head coach Klint Kubiak had already said he did not want a full redshirt year for the rookie. What changed the calendar was not Mendoza’s readiness but the phone call from Minnesota, and the trade that followed turned a succession plan into a Sunday debut.

What did Spytek and Kubiak actually say about him?

That the practices forced their hand. “This is something that he’s worked very hard for since the moment he’s walked into this building,” Spytek said, the Raiders report. “He passed every test. He put us in a position where we had to make a really hard decision today with his growth as a person, as a teammate, as a leader, as a quarterback.” Kubiak added that Mendoza “practices extremely well and his work habits also allowed us to make this trade because we feel that he’s ready to go,” and told reporters the rookie had exceeded every expectation in practice and shown he is ready “not only physically but mentally,” the Associated Press reports.

Not everyone in the room looked thrilled. Reuters, reporting from the press conference, noted Kubiak sitting to Spytek’s immediate left, the silver brim of his cap shading his eyes, and wrote that it was hard to tell whether he blinked through a blank stare but nearly certain he did not smile after subtracting Cousins from the roster. Kubiak and Cousins worked together before, when Kubiak was the Vikings’ quarterbacks coach and then offensive coordinator, and the coach had leaned on the veteran all season. The stare is the one crack in the official story: the front office is excited, and the head coach has just lost the quarterback who made his first year work.

What did Cousins say on the way out?

Three words, and a photo. Cousins posted on social media alongside a picture of him and Mendoza walking together: “Thank you Raider Nation! Go get em @fernandomendoza,” the Associated Press reports. It fits how he handled the whole season. Cousins repeatedly said the best quarterback should play, whether it was him or Mendoza, and Spytek said the veteran was open about the plan from the day he signed, telling reporters: “We’re all kind of staring the future in the face here with Fernando, and Kirk was open with that when we got him.”

He leaves behind a better season than the record shows. Cousins threw for 2,340 yards with 20 touchdowns and eight interceptions for a 97.1 passer rating, Reuters reports, and his 20 touchdown passes were second in the league behind only Joe Burrow’s 23. Las Vegas ranked eighth in scoring at 26.4 points per game despite the league’s second-worst rushing attack at 71.3 yards per game, the Associated Press reports. The production is also why the Raiders could afford to wait: Cousins was good enough that there was no pressure to rush the rookie, and Kubiak said that patience was the correct approach.

What is Mendoza walking into on Sunday?

The hardest possible first start, then another one. Seattle visits Allegiant Stadium on Sunday at 4:05 p.m. ET, USA Today reports, and a road trip to Denver follows, where the Broncos played in last season’s AFC championship game and are competing with Kansas City for the AFC West title, the Associated Press reports. Mendoza’s college record is the best in the country: a Heisman Trophy and a national championship at Indiana in 2025, completing 72 percent of his passes for 3,535 yards and a nation-leading 41 touchdown passes as a junior, the Raiders report. His NFL record is eight pass attempts, six completions, 48 yards, all of it in mop-up duty against New England.

The roster around him is thin where it matters. The run game that ranked second-worst in the league does not take pressure off a rookie, and the defence has given up 30 or more points in five straight games, which is the context the trade-deadline report laid out when the deal was made. The backup is fourth-year pro Aidan O’Connell, who has 17 career starts, the Associated Press reports, but the job is Mendoza’s now, and the leash is the rest of the season.

Is this the Raiders giving up on the season?

Spytek says it is the opposite. “This in no way signifies we are punting on the season or looking forward to 2027,” he said, the Associated Press reports. “We have a big game this week against the defending world champs, and we intend to attack it like we would any week.” Las Vegas is 4-5 and still in the playoff hunt, and theScore reports the same denial from the press conference. The claim is easy to make and hard to square with the move itself: a team that believed it was one quarterback away from a run does not hand the offence to a rookie with eight career pass attempts in mid-November. The honest version is that the Raiders are doing both things at once, chasing the playoffs with the player they drafted to define the next five years, and Sunday will show which of those two goals the roster can actually support.

What happens next?

Sunday answers the only question that matters. If Mendoza looks ready against Seattle, the conversation becomes the rookie class and the playoff race in the same breath. If he does not, the Denver trip a week later gets much harder, and the “not punting” line gets tested in public. In Minnesota, Cousins returns to the Vikings with the Green Bay trip on Sunday and the bridge role until Kyler Murray returns from his hamstring injury. Around the league, the quarterback carousel keeps turning: Cleveland is expected to start Deshaun Watson against Houston after a 297-yard finish from Shedeur Sanders changed nothing, and the Eagles cashed in a captain for a first-round pick on the same deadline day that sent Cousins home. The trade deadline is over. The auditions it started are just beginning.