In a year when many of the best-known quarterbacks in college football have faltered, a player who entered the season as a relative unknown has emerged as the favorite to be the first overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft.<\/p>\n
Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the betting favorite to be the top pick in April, with odds of +200 at DraftKings.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-5, 225-pound Mendoza was not viewed as an elite prospect during his three years at Cal, but he is now, after transferring to Indiana this year and leading the Hoosiers to a 6-0 record, while completing 71.2 percent of his passes with 17 touchdowns and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
After Mendoza, the player with the next-best odds to go first overall is South Carolina quarterback LaNorris Sellers at +350.<\/p>\n
Following Sellers are Oregon quarterback Dante Moore at +650 and Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson at +650.<\/p>\n
The first non-quarterback in the draft odds is Miami defensive end Rueben Bain at +1000.<\/p>\n
Long shots include LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier at +1500, USC quarterback Jayden Maiava at +2500, Miami quarterback Carson Beck at +2500, Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer at +3000 and Texas quarterback Arch Manning at +4000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a year when many of the best-known quarterbacks in college football have faltered, a player who entered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":["post-223211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}