The Mendoza Line
Is Fernando Mendoza A Good Prospect? What does that even mean?
College stats often lie when it comes to projecting NFL success. This is a known fact. We’ve seen countless quarterbacks with gaudy college numbers become NFL busts, and we’ve seen Josh Allens and Matt Ryans go from average college box scores to NFL MVPs. Even more advanced metrics like EPA per Dropback, currently the gold standard for measuring NFL production, haven’t exactly been harbingers of pro success in college, considering the two best EPA/DB seasons in the last 20+ years of college football belong to Jason Bean and Grayson McCall. This tends to lead scouts and film buffs to a dismissive “stats are for losers” attitude toward the use of any numbers in the draft process. I think that’s a mistake, but I also think people just tend to look at the wrong stats.
Most stats, be they yards or touchdowns or EPA, are results. College results don’t tell us much, as they might be the product of wide hashmarks or future NFL Hall of Fame wide receivers leaving future Footlocker employees in the dust. What we can look at is how college quarterbacks got their production. We can’t learn much from how many yards a college quarterback racked up, but we can learn a lot from whether he tended to scramble under pressure or hang in the pocket and throw the ball. It matters whether his interceptions came under pressure or whether he screwed up from a clean pocket. It tells us a lot if he was aggressive downfield or if he preferred to do most of his damage on short throws and let his receivers do the work. Players can improve certain skills, like deep ball accuracy or reading defenses, but they (usually) don’t dramatically change how they play when they make the leap. The guy who is scared to throw deep in college isn’t likely to find NFL secondaries less imposing, the quarterback who drops his eyes to the rush and takes off in clean pockets isn’t likely to become more disciplined when NFL pockets get tight and so on. So what I like to do is look at how a guy plays and see what the history of that type of player is in the NFL in order to get an idea of how they might project at the next level.
To that end I’ve created The Spreadsheet, a massive document that has the career college data of 140+ drafted or draft-eligible QBs since 2014, where I track how they play in terms of things like Average Depth of Target (ADOT), Pressure to Sack Rate (P2S), Clean Pocket Scramble Rate, Deep Attempt % and so on and so forth. What I’ve found through this is that most of the things that scouts stress are important for a prospect really do matter when it comes to things like pocket presence and poise under pressure and using all parts of the field etc, and that historical player comps are very important. Which is why it’s funny that scouts very often fail to check the numbers to see if they’re actually right about a player, and if the comp they’ve used actually works.
I’ve heard a lot about how Fernando Mendoza is a “high floor, low-ceiling” guy. He’s been compared a lot to Jared Goff, or even Kirk Cousins. Hearing this when I started watching him and entering numbers into The Spreadsheet I really expected to see a guy with limited physical skills who was accurate, disciplined within the pocket, and limited negative plays. I don’t think this game manager narrative is particularly accurate when it comes to Mendoza. The numbers were actually somewhat discouraging from that perspective, but the good news is the traits to me look better than advertised.
On the traits front, Mendoza has a lot to like. He’s big at 6’5”, 225 lbs. For a guy drawing comps to famously lead-footed guys like Goff and Cousins, he’s a capable runner, averaging 25 rushing yards per game in his career and 5.5 yards per carry. His arm strength is quite good and he can rip deep outs and hit hole shots against Cover 2 as well as anybody. Mendoza also isn’t an older prospect in an era that’s been dominated lately by super-seniors and COVID-extension beneficiaries. He’s young, he’s big, he’s strong, he’s decently mobile. This is good. This is the foundation of a solid prospect, guys have been drafted high for less. Hell, Rick Mirer got a 10 year NFL career out of being tall and going to Notre Dame. This is a good start.
I’m glad I like Mendoza’s traits, because the numbers are…okay? At best?
Here’s Mendoza on the main page of The Spreadsheet against the other 1st overall picks I have data for. The colors aren’t just how these guys compare to each other but how they stack up against all 140 other guys in there. Compared to the average draft-eligible quarterback and the average top pick Mendoza is quite conservative, with an ADOT of just 8.9 yards. His accuracy is as advertised, with an adjusted completion % in the top third of all QBs since 2014, but I do think that has a bit of a caveat when you consider the low ADOT. Overall though you can see that Mendoza looks fairly less impressive than the kind of quarterback we usually see go at the top of the draft, with the exception of last year’s first overall pick, Cam Ward. Ward is about the least useful comp imaginable, though, since after a thoroughly Meh rookie year on a truly awful team I don’t think we have any idea yet what kind of NFL quarterback he’s actually going to be.
What concerns me a tad with Mendoza is the Big Time Throw rate ranking in the bottom third of all quarterbacks. Now Big Time Throw rate is subjective (as is a lot of the PFF data I use for all of this) but I have found it to be a decently worrying indicator if a quarterback ranks fairly low in it. Here’s 1st/2nd round prospects with a BTT rate under 5%:
Now, obviously there’s some good quarterbacks in here. You know how I feel about Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix, but your mileage may vary. Jalen Hurts has done well for himself, although there are certainly questions about how much of that success is him vs his supporting cast etc. Lamar Jackson is obviously amazing. So it’s not damning, but I do think when you look at similar players in terms of ADOT and BTT to Mendoza like Daniel Jones you get the sense that Mendoza in the NFL may be more the kind of quarterback who relies on quick throws and accuracy underneath than generating a ton of big plays. That is no doubt where some of these Goff and Cousins vibes are coming from, but I worry he takes a bit too many sacks and has a fairly high turnover-worthy play rate for someone who wants to live like that in the NFL. His P2S rate of 21.1% is bottom five for a first round quarterback prospect, and while guys like Lamar Jackson (20.4%) and Joe Burrow (22.2%) have been successful in the NFL the P2S rate has proven fairly sticky nonetheless. Both Burrow and Lamar have had above-average sack rates in the NFL, and while they more than compensate for it with their ability to generate big plays, both were much more aggressive passers in college than Mendoza. The fear here is that Mendoza might be more like Daniel Jones, who eats sacks and often fails to offset them with explosives.
Also concerning to me is the turnover-worthy play rate from Mendoza. While 3.5% isn’t historically bad by any means, TWP% has been on decline for most first round prospects over the last 5-7 years. Mendoza’s 3.5% is the highest for a first round pick since Anthony Richardson, and just the sixth TWP of 3% or higher out of the 18 first round QBs since 2021. TWP isn’t as sticky as P2S rate and we’ve seen guys cut down turnovers in more structured situations in the league (think Texas Tech Pat Mahomes vs NFL Mahomes), but I still don’t think the combo of high turnovers+high sacks is a great sign for a guy who, again, isn’t consistently generating explosives with them. Mendoza had an interception rate of 1.7% from clean pockets in college, again second only to Anthony Richardson among first round QBs since 2020. Not all of his recklessness can be blamed on the poor supporting cast he had at Cal.
The main reason I fear Mendoza won’t generate much in the way of explosives in the league is that his deep attempt % is very low for a first round prospect:
This has proven almost as sticky in my research as pressure to sack rate. Guys who don’t push the ball downfield consistently in college rarely find more courage in the NFL where windows close faster, coverages are more complex, and wide receivers rarely gain clear separation. Marcus Mariota is the only one of the passers on that list to have an above average NFL yards per completion average in his career. It’s not a super promising combination with a guy who will likely lose yards to sacks and commit his fair share of turnovers. The comp again that comes to mind is Daniel Jones: big, strong, accurate underneath, athletic—but not particularly dynamic.
Now, there are some things that are very strong about Mendoza. He’s very good and accurate on short throws. While that sounds like damning with faint praise, I assure you it’s not. Short passing success actually is one of the best predictors of NFL success in a league where the quick passing game has become so predominant. Mendoza’s 81.3% completion rate on 0-9 air yard throws in college is second only to Joe Burrow among 1st round prospects with at least 300 short passing attempts since the 2015 draft.
Another thing I like to look at is a quarterback’s clean pocket numbers, since it can help to filter out some noise caused by bad situations (again, Mahomes at Texas Tech). Mendoza’s closest comp in clean pocket situations is fairly encouraging as well given that he’s also going to be the point man in a Shanahan system under Klint Kubiak:
A Brock Purdy variant that’s 6’5” and has a rocket arm sounds pretty good, although Purdy was also quite hard to sack (12.9% P2S rate vs 21.1 for Mendoza) and that has been a large component of his NFL success. Purdy also loved attacking the intermediate and deep middle of the field in college, with almost 24% of his non-screen pass attempts going between the numbers 10+ yards downfield. He graded out very well in the department as well, with an 88.1 career PFF grade on those throws. Mendoza attacked the MOF at a slightly below-average rate of 21.2%, and more concerningly his 78.7 grade on those throws is the 4th-lowest of any 1st round QB since 2015, above only Trey Lance, Dwayne Haskins, and (again) Daniel Jones. He may not see as neat of a transition to the NFL as Purdy did, since Purdy’s love of digs and crossers etc fit the Shanahan offense like a glove, and Mendoza may need more time to get comfortable testing those windows in the pros.
In conclusion, Fernando Mendoza is a land of contrasts. Yes, he’s accurate and efficient in quick game, like the Goff and Matt Ryan comps indicate (that’s good) but he’s also a bit more reckless with the football and more likely to take sacks than that archetype (that’s bad). He’s also more capable of creating with his legs than those guys (that’s good). Unfortunately he’s also less likely to quickly acclimate to working the middle of the field in the passing game than them (that’s bad). He’s got way more arm strength than them (he comes with a free frogurt!), but his passing profile indicates he’s a bit more conservative with that big arm than he should be (the frogurt is also cursed). Ultimately I think Mendoza falls solidly in the middle of the pack as far as recent first round quarterback prospects go, and while there’s potential there I think the dominant narrative that he’s some kind of super processor and genius who can hit the ground running as a Goff-style pocket operator is unfair to him. I’d expect he’ll need a bit of time to become whatever it is he’s going to be.