{"id":592409,"date":"2026-04-08T01:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T01:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/592409\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T01:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T01:23:11","slug":"fernando-mendoza-refuses-to-attend-the-nfl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/592409\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Presumptive first pick of the draft, Indiana QB, Fernando Mendoza, will not attend the NFL Draft, and he has a good reason.<\/p>\n<p>He wants to share his draft experience with friends and family in Miami.<\/p>\n<p>Since Mendoza is a lock for the overall No. 1 pick, who will be going to the <a href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/football\/nfl\/teams\/las-vegas-raiders\/341\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Las Vegas Raiders;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Las Vegas Raiders&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Las Vegas Raiders<\/a>, it makes sense he\u2019d want to stay home.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, we\u2019ve seen several quarterbacks have to sit through a draft for several rounds before they were drafted. Two players come to mind. Shedeur Sanders and Aaron Rodgers.<\/p>\n<p>It was torture for not only Sanders, but the rest of the audience to watch as he slipped round after round until the Cleveland Browns drafted him in the fifth round.<\/p>\n<p>Mel Kiper Jr. thought that Sanders should have gone higher, and it turned into a huge controversy, with Kiper calling out teams that didn\u2019t draft Sanders.<\/p>\n<p>We also had to watch an embarrassed Aaron Rodgers sit through several rounds of his draft before the Green Bay Packers picked him up.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Teams like his hometown favorite, the San Francisco 49ers, passed on the four-time NFL MVP.<\/p>\n<p>So it is understandable why Mendoza and others may skip this year\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: <a href=\"https:\/\/touchdownwire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/nfl\/touchdown\/2026\/04\/07\/fernando-mendoza-refuses-to-attend-the-nfl-draft\/89506965007\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Fernando Mendoza refuses to attend the NFL Draft<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Presumptive first pick of the draft, Indiana QB, Fernando Mendoza, will not attend the NFL Draft, and he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[626,64,63,1238,1243,289232,1250,5140,593,10028,1262,1244,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-592409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-aaron-rodgers","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-cleveland-browns","12":"tag-green-bay-packers","13":"tag-indiana-qb","14":"tag-las-vegas-raiders","15":"tag-miami","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-nfl-draft","18":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","19":"tag-shedeur-sanders","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592409","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=592409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}