{"id":418211,"date":"2026-01-20T06:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T06:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418211\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T06:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T06:57:08","slug":"fernando-mendoza-bloodied-on-big-hit-in-cfp-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/418211\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernando Mendoza bloodied on big hit in CFP National Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fernando Mendoza was rocked like a Hurricane in the first quarter of the CFP National Championship game on Monday night,<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/LandonTengwall\/status\/2013422295109263613\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> leaving the Indiana quarterback bloodied.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mendoza was hit by Miami defensive back Jakobe Thomas on the chin as he was tackled to the ground on a second-down play during the Hoosiers\u2019 second drive of the game at Hard Rock Stadium on Monday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The potential top-5 pick in this April\u2019s NFL draft attempted to fake a run when Thomas plowed through Mendoza, going low and seemingly raising his body as he went for the hit, which sent the QB spinning to the ground.\u00a0Mendoza is expected to go as high as No. 1 to the quarterback-needy Raiders.<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Mendoza leaves a play with his lip bloodied up during the first quarter of the national championship game against Miami. X @espn<\/p>\n<p>Blood could be seen coming from the lower part of Mendoza\u2019s mouth on the broadcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you see Jakobe Thomas coming down. They\u2019ve been told this week to hit Mendoza as often as they can,\u201d Kirk Herbstreit said on the ESPN broadcast. \u201cThat time, carrying out the fake. You can see he got up underneath the chin strap and face mask. \u2026 Instead of laying off, boom, hits him. Again, when they get their chances, they want to lay the wood. You see right there, they\u2019re sending a message early in this game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Francisco Mendoza was left bloodied by a big Miami hit.  @LandonTengwall\/X<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Mendoza takes a hit by Miami defensive back Jakobe Thomas on the chin. X @espn<\/p>\n<p>No penalty was assessed on the play.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Indiana coach Curt Cignetti blasted the officials during halftime when he was speaking with ESPN\u2019s Holly Rowe. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThree personal fouls on the quarterback that weren\u2019t called on one drive,\u201d Cignetti said. \u201cI\u2019m all for letting them play, but when you cross the line, you got to call it. And they weren\u2019t, they were black and white calls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Hoosiers did manage to get points out of the drive, converting on a 34-yard field goal.<\/p>\n<p>Top-seeded Indiana leads No. 10 Miami 10-0 at the half. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Mendoza was rocked like a Hurricane in the first quarter of the CFP National Championship game on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1607,68073,399,6815,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-418211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-fernando-mendoza","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-indiana-hoosiers","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418211","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=418211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}