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":234393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-234392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}