{"id":768366,"date":"2026-07-17T13:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/768366\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T13:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T13:58:08","slug":"do-the-raiders-have-a-true-quarterback-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/768366\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the Raiders have a true quarterback competition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite plenty of struggles since last winning the Super Bowl more than four years before Kirk Cousins was born, the Raiders have earned the first overall pick in the draft only twice: in 2007 and in 2026.<\/p>\n

How did it go the last time? Not too good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

JaMarcus Russell didn\u2019t start right away. It probably wouldn\u2019t have mattered if he had. After 25 starts in three seasons, it was over for him.<\/p>\n

Now, Fernando Mendoza enters the fray with the hope of becoming the first true year-to-year franchise quarterback the Raiders have had since Kenny Stabler. And the options for Week 1 are Mendoza and Cousins.<\/p>\n

In late March, new coach Klint Kubiak made it clear that he\u2019d prefer to have Mendoza \u201cwatching a mature adult<\/a> go and run an offense and run the team.\u201d But Cousins has acknowledged that the decision should be driven by merit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly don\u2019t want to start unless I\u2019m the best option, and I told Klint that,\u201d Cousins said in early April. \u201cThe best player should play<\/a>. As long as that\u2019s the case, I have no qualms about however it plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how will it play out? Kubiak talked up Cousins<\/a> during the offseason program, which could be another clue as to Kubiak\u2019s preference. But training camp is a different beast.<\/p>\n

When practice begins, and when both quarterbacks are getting chances to do what they do, the players will have a chance to witness their performances. To compare and to contrast them. And, ultimately, to develop an impression as to which guy provides the better option to win games.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s Mendoza, it won\u2019t be easy to bench him for Cousins. The other players (starting with Maxx Crosby) will want to win. If the players think Mendoza puts them in a better position to do that, they won\u2019t be thrilled with a long-term plan to get more out of Mendoza later by having him do less now.<\/p>\n

The Chiefs pulled that off with Patrick Mahomes nine years ago because the Chiefs were a perennial playoff team under Alex Smith. The Raiders are a perennial also-ran, running behind the other teams in the AFC West. If the locker room thinks Mendoza is, to use Cousins\u2019s term, \u201cthe best player,\u201d the locker room won\u2019t be thrilled with the idea of keeping Fernando parked in the garage like a Ferrari, opting instead to tool around in a Fiat.<\/p>\n

And if the 37-year-old Cousins, who had no immediate market for his services as a clear-cut QB1 elsewhere, outperforms Mendoza, what does that say about the Raiders\u2019 decision to make Mendoza the first overall pick in the draft?<\/p>\n

The days of the five-year plan in the NFL ended closer to five decades than five years ago. Life in the NFL happens one season at a time. Veteran players don\u2019t want a year in which players less than the best available at all positions aren\u2019t playing.<\/p>\n

Put simply, the Raiders haven\u2019t been good enough to put the better player on the bench. If that\u2019s Mendoza, he needs to play. If it\u2019s not Mendoza, maybe they should have picked a better player when they returned to the JaMarcus Russell spot for the first time in 19 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite plenty of struggles since last winning the Super Bowl more than four years before Kirk Cousins was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-768366","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\/768366","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=768366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}