Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza may not be the starter in Las Vegas right away, but the first overall pick in this year\u2019s draft will get there soon enough and he\u2019s getting some advice from veteran teammates about how to prepare for the leadership aspects of the role. <\/p>\n
Defensive end Maxx Crosby had Mendoza on his The Rush podcast and he asked Mendoza about his relationship with Kirk Cousins. Cousins signed with the Raiders as a free agent and would be the other choice to start at quarterback in Week 1, but Mendoza said that he\u2019s been helpful when it comes to sharing advice he\u2019s picked up during his time with Washington, Minnesota and Atlanta. <\/p>\n
Mendoza said one of the biggest lessons from Cousins is that he always needs to be his genuine self in order for older teammates to believe in him as a leader. Crosby called that advice \u201cspot on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re not genuine, guys pick up on that real quick,\u201d Crosby said. \u201cCollege is different. You\u2019re growing as a man, you\u2019re trying to figure out who you are and evolve as a leader, and you\u2019re still going to school. You\u2019re just trying to figure out life and how to operate. But once you get to the league, everyone\u2019s grown men. Dudes have full families. They have different types of motivations, and everyone\u2019s coming from a different walk of life. So being genuine, you\u2019ll never go wrong. And trust me, I\u2019m a little weird too. I do a lot of s\u2014t. I\u2019m not saying you\u2019re weird, but I\u2019m off the wall sometimes, and I\u2019ll say some s\u2014t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crosby went on to say that players should never be \u201cover the top trying to prove\u201d that they can lead, because true leaders just do it. Mendoza\u2019s process will continue at training camp and the Raiders will hoping people buy into him on all fronts once he does take the reins. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza may not be the starter in Las Vegas right away, but the first overall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-750931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750931","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=750931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}