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HENDERSON, Nev. — The Las Vegas Strip is an iconic entertainment mecca, with conspicuous enticements that most 22-year-old multi-millionaires might be hard-pressed to resist.
They don’t call it Sin City, or insist that what happens there stays there, for nothing.
Yet one recently relocated Vegas-area resident — who happens to symbolize the hopes and dreams of a nearby NFL franchise’s fanbase — is staying away from the Strip as if it houses the post-apocalyptic underground tunnels in “The Last of Us.”
Fernando Mendoza has his reasons, most of which can only be explained by referencing the ongoing conversation in his head.
Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner who led Indiana to a stunning national championship last January, is set to make his NFL debut for the Las Vegas Raiders in Thursday night’s preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals at Allegiant Stadium. It will be one of the few occasions on which the 6-foot-5 quarterback has ventured even close to the Strip since the Raiders selected him with the first overall pick in April’s draft.
“I’ve been there once or twice, but I haven’t really experienced the Strip,” Mendoza told me Tuesday during a lunch break at the Raiders’ training facility. “It’s like a boogeyman. A lot of people talk about the Strip like, ‘You don’t want to go there.’
“It’s like when you’re a kid; you’re trick-or-treating, and there’s the haunted house. You’re not trying to go over there.”
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Mendoza’s trepidation isn’t so much that he’ll be taunted by temptation. What he’s really afraid of is making an unforced error by deviating from what got him here — an ultra-disciplined ethos that helped him rise from relative obscurity to become minority owner Tom Brady’s sanctioned choice to uplift a struggling franchise.
Locked in a training-camp competition with veteran Kirk Cousins and confronting the likelihood of a second-string role and slow rollout, Mendoza doesn’t mind being patient. However, he would love not to faceplant.
More to the point, Mendoza is tormented by the thought of failing because he, and he alone, allowed his priorities to become skewed.
“The system that got me here, it’s a grinder system,” Mendoza said. “It’s a system where I know I put a lot into it, and best-case (scenario), boom, it’s letting me have success already. And let’s say worst-worst-worst-case scenario, it doesn’t go my way, or it doesn’t go the team’s way. Then I can rest my head at night knowing I did everything I possibly (could). … I best served my teammates, I prepared, and I didn’t let them down.”
Mendoza can come off as hokey, like someone playing a character (“Underdog QB”) in a feel-good movie, but his atypical combination of audacious self-belief and earnest humility is real.
Ask him about his adjustment to the pro game, and he speaks not in cliches or vague generalizations, but as a recent college graduate (of UC Berkeley’s Haas business administration and management program) who was just thrown into his profession’s most challenging cauldron.
Less than three years ago, in late September 2023, Mendoza stood on the California Memorial Stadium sideline in Berkeley during Cal’s 24-21 victory over Arizona State and doubted whether he belonged as a college quarterback. The Bears had given Mendoza his only Division I offer, and he was the lowest-ranked member of their 2022 recruiting class and lowest-ranked quarterback in the Pac-12.
In his fifth game as Cal’s third-string quarterback, against a Sun Devils team that would finish 3-9, Mendoza questioned everything.
“I was like, man, I don’t think I can play at this level,” Mendoza recalled. “I’m looking from the sideline, I’m like, ‘Man … there’s nothing open or available … these people are too fast.’”
Nonetheless, Mendoza was elevated to the starting lineup for the following week’s game against Oregon State. He remembers missing a receiver on an “awful, wide-open throw” early on and questioning himself once more. Then he settled down, put up 40 points in a home defeat, seized the starting job and continued to improve over the next season-and-a-half.
In 2025, after transferring to Indiana, Mendoza went 16-0, won the Heisman and celebrated the Hoosiers’ first national title in his hometown of Miami. Other than that, he didn’t really have much success.
Mendoza’s ascent has been dreamlike — but reality, in his mind, is lurking around the corner, waiting to smack him in the face.
He knows that Cousins, a four-time Pro Bowl selection heading into his 15th season, long ago mastered the framework of rookie coach Klint Kubiak’s scheme during their shared time with the Minnesota Vikings. Compared to him, Mendoza is a novice, and the distinction is not subtle.
“Rookie year, it really gets slammed up on you,” he said. “Like, ‘Boom, here’s your playbook, and here we go.’ Especially seeing Kirk Cousins in the room, who knows a lot. It’s like, ‘Wow, I thought I knew a lot. Holy shuck! I’m how far behind? I’ve got to study this to feel confident in my preparation and in myself.’”
There have been moments on the practice field when Mendoza feels totally overwhelmed. At other times, he has performed well enough to reinforce the “power of optimism” within and give him a sense of belonging.
Mendoza got a confidence boost on Saturday when Cousins, along with star edge rusher Maxx Crosby, was held out of practice by Kubiak because of an altercation the previous day. Running with the first-team offense, Mendoza marched the unit down the field during a two-minute drill and set up a field goal.
“There are moments like that where it’s like, ‘Cool, we can do this,’” he said. “I’m looking forward to more of those moments. Maybe I might get a little excited at first ’cause I really, really want this, but then I calm down, see the field and (think), ‘OK, I got this.’”
Kirk Cousins, left, entered training camp having far more experience in Klint Kubiak’s offense than did Fernando Mendoza. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
He hopes that feeling will be replicated during Thursday’s preseason debut, likely in relief of Cousins (Kubiak said Tuesday that Mendoza will get “plenty of experience” against the Cardinals). The rookie’s goal is to improve incrementally and methodically — and to avoid anything that might distract him from the task at hand.
Unlike Cousins, who famously doesn’t do anything football-related on Tuesdays during the season, Mendoza is at peace with the knowledge that his work-life balance is tilted appreciably in the former’s favor.
“I also don’t have a lot of responsibility,” Mendoza said. “It obviously changes. Talking to Kirk, and then also talking to Tom Brady, when you have kids and get married, it’s different. These years of your life, you can be more committed to the game.”
Thus, Mendoza is keeping it simple. Real simple. His wardrobe, he said, basically consists of “team gear and Adidas,” the apparel company that first signed Mendoza to an NIL deal in December. Despite having signed a rookie contract that guarantees him more than $57 million, he doesn’t even own a chair. “I’m living in the hotel right now, with a lot of the rookies,” Mendoza said. “I have a house, but it’s not even furnished or anything … there’s like one little couch. I’m just like a 22-year-old guy living by myself. I don’t really need much.”
In the next breath, Mendoza, with wonderment in his voice, extolled the virtues of the Raiders’ training facility: “This facility’s so great. The weight room … They have a flippin’ pool! This is like a resort. There are three meals a day; the chefs here are amazing. There’s so much stuff to do here!”
He has grabbed a few meals out with teammates, even visiting a couple of restaurants on the Strip, and hit a couple of movie theaters, too. That, he insisted, is the extent of his social life. The sports world’s most famous LinkedIn aficionado said he has tuned out social media until season’s end. As far as dating (“The playbook is my girlfriend”) or partying (“Go out and have a beer or something? Yeah, for sure, but there’s a point of diminishing returns”) — those pursuits, he said, have also gone dark.
“Las Vegas is one of the entertainment capitals of the world,” he said. “But I have a job to do, and it’s football. I don’t have anybody that really relies on me, if that makes sense, so I can just be psycho about football. And then every once in a while, on an off day or night, I can go out to a movie and watch ‘Spiderman’ or ‘The Odyssey’ or something.
“In Vegas, there is a lot to do, and sometimes it can be seen as activities that wouldn’t be supporting a healthy football lifestyle. But there are different things that you can go see and do that aren’t degenerative activities, per se. There are some great restaurants. But I’m probably not going to be playing blackjack till late at night.”
Instead, Mendoza is betting on himself — and sticking with the system that has accompanied him on his unlikely odyssey, every improbable step of the way.
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