As a reigning Heisman Trophy winner, National Champion and No. 1 overall draft pick, expectations are high. But Mendoza is also being brought along very deliberately and, as Kubiak said, the job is Cousins’ “to lose.” And that’s fair, too.<\/p>\n
Mendoza has plenty of resources at his disposal, from Cousins on the sidelines – “He’s a pretty smart, mature player and person,” Cousins said. “If anything, I don’t want to get in his way.” – to Tom Brady at the team meeting the night before.<\/p>\n
“He said, ‘No matter how good of a high school or college player you were, the NFL’s a different level,'” Mendoza recounted Brady telling the team.<\/p>\n
Especially on that sack, when Mendoza could have gotten away in college with holding onto the ball a heartbeat longer.<\/p>\n
“There was one play where I scrambled to the right and, usually, sometimes I’ll be able to get the edge, maybe scramble for two or three yards,” he said with a giggle. “[Instead], it’s like, ‘Wow, you guys are a little faster than I thought.’<\/p>\n
“So I had to throw the ball away and try to make the smart play, to best serve my teammates. So I would say they’re definitely faster, and they hit harder. Surprised, but no surprise.”<\/p>\n
But it’s a small sample size. One that will grow with two more exhibitions, at Houston and home against the 49ers, plus a joint practice with the Texans.<\/p>\n
As Kubiak said, Mendoza needs reps, and he’s going to get them. And that’s not a kneejerk reaction to his debut; it’s part of the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a reigning Heisman Trophy winner, National Champion and No. 1 overall draft pick, expectations are high. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[344102,68073,23481,23482,99],"class_list":["post-814419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-arizona-cardinals-at-las-vegas-raiders-2026-pre-1","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-home-centerpiece","tag-home-latest-stories","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814419","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=814419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}