HUGE NEWS - Mendoza Signs His Massive Contract AND Jermod McCoy Is Already CB1!?

Hallelujah! Training camp is here, which means we have stuff to talk about, which means the season is essentially under two months away from beginning. Oh my gosh. You know what's nice about this season in particular, is that we don't have delusions of grandeur. I feel like everybody's kind of on the same page in terms of what we expect from the Raiders. We don't expect them to even make the playoffs. It's just like, let's just develop Fernando. Let's get Ashton Gente 1,000 yards. Let's see Clint Kubiak call some plays and challenge some questionable calls. Let's make sure that John Spytek hits on some of these draft picks. You know, nice and easy-breezy. You know what else is nice and easy-breezy? Fernando Mendoza signing his contract, which we're going to talk about. Also, word on the street is, if Jermod McCoy is healthy, he's gonna be the week one, number one starting cornerback. That's interesting. And then we got Coach Gruden, former coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, former coach of the Oakland Raiders, breaking down how he sees Fernando Mendoza v. Kirk Cousins. A lot of that going around. We're gonna get answers essentially one week from now. We're gonna start to get some real answers as to what the starting offense and defense looks like. Sneeze is coming. Thank you again. Well, I always, am I allergic to making videos? Whatever, doesn't matter. The first thing we need to discuss, obviously, is the contract that Fernando Mendoza signed. It's fully guaranteed. 50-something million over four years of the fifth-year option. He was the last rookie to sign his contract. Jermod McCoy was the other one, which by the way, that kind of tells you all you need to know in terms of the talent of Jermod McCoy, that he was waiting with Fernando Mendoza. Obviously, they weren't doing it together. I'm just saying, talent-wise, it was Jermod and it was Fernando. And if Jermod stays healthy, oh man, he could have an impact bigger than Fernando Mendoza this season because Mendoza might not play. But it's interesting to finally see the dollar amount because that's what people say is a tick in the box of, well, Kirk Cousins is gonna start. They paid him all this money. Fernando Mendoza, as the first pick in the draft, is making a lot more money than Kirk Cousins. And we're gonna talk about it right here, right now. Ryan McFadden on ESPN. Raiders signed number one pick Fernando Mendoza to rookie contract, finally. First overall pick Fernando Mendoza has signed the rookie contract with the Las Vegas Raiders on Thursday. The team announced Mendoza signed a four-year, $57.27 million fully guaranteed deal with the fifth-year option. The Raiders' entire 10-player 2026 draft class is now under contract as they report for training camp today. The wait is over. 15, Raider Nation. Oh, can't get on there. I blocked Twitter on my computer, so I don't go on it as much. The veterans will arrive on July 28th with the team's first training camp practice taking place the following day. July 28th, what day is that? Okay, so next week, Wednesday. Mendoza under contract, okay. Mendoza's first player that the Raiders drafted, first overall since Jamarcus Wilson in 2007. He will be competing with veterans Kirk Cousins and O'Connell for the starting job. Cousins currently has the upper hand in the quarterback competition, having received the most first-team reps during the Raiders offseason program. Meanwhile, Mendoza played mostly with the third team and has occasional reps with the second team offense. Cousins signed in the offseason with the expectation that he could be the starter to begin the year, allowing the team to be patient with Mendoza's development, and then here's a little Adam Scheffner on GetUp talking about it. ...who plays quarterback, and they brought in Kirk Cousins to be the leader, to be the starter, to be the veteran that takes the pressure off Fernando Mendoza and not have to rush along their number one overall pick. The belief has been that Cousins will be the starter. They'll be the starter into the season. We'll see when they decide to change quarterbacks, but Cousins is the favorite to start on opening day. They want to bring along Mendoza very slowly. Just jumped out of my head. Who was it in the meeting this morning talking about how the number one overall picks have all started week one? I think it's the last five quarterbacks. It's number one overall. Here we go. All have started week one. So for Mendoza not to start week one would buck a huge trend, and by the way, teams always say we're gonna bring along this guy very slowly. We're not in a rush to start him, and then lo and behold, they start him every single year. Okay, so interesting. If you just take a look at this kind of graphic I wanted to talk about. Cam Ward, Caleb Williams, Bryce Young, Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow. I would argue very wide levels of success in terms of playing them right out the gate. Bryce Young still kind of up in the air. Trevor Lawrence has been up and down for a long time. Caleb Williams, bad rookie season, a lot better this year, although he still struggled at times. Joe Burrow, good when he's healthy, and Cam Ward, we have no idea. So playing them immediately, the last five times it seems, doesn't guarantee you much. The last, oops, the last first overall pick to not start week one, I believe, was Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield's having a pretty decent career. Carson Palmer as well, I don't believe started right away. Carson Palmer ended up an MVP. Joe Burrow has been the closest person to win an MVP from these guys. I am very happy that he signed, and there was an interesting thing going around here because obviously, we don't know. Is he gonna start? Is he not gonna start? Is it a real quarterback competition? Is it rigged? I'm pulling up a picture here. I gotta find it. It's in my Discord. My Discord's very active, so I gotta scroll all the way back up to find where I put this in the Discord. And if you haven't, you know, I might as well share this. If you're not in this Discord right now, what the heck are you doing? You should be in it. It's completely free. Link in the description below. It's a big group chat with all of us. Pulling it up here now, so you can see kind of, kind of what we're working with. And I'm gonna find that picture. Way right here. But yeah, here's the Discord. Should definitely be in here. Chatting it up. We got a bunch of different tabs. Where is this picture that I posted? Hold on. We're getting there. It was essentially saying that Fernando Mendoza, once training camp starts, is going to get some first-team reps. And this is the beginning of him potentially walking through the door and being that starting quarterback. Now, I said this last night. Look at this. Okay. Okay, we're getting there. I should have had this up earlier. I can't believe how active this Discord is, that I can't just scroll and scroll. Okay, there's Rappaport talking about it. And then we got John Gruen talking about the quarterback situation. And then we got, you know, we got some, we got some Jermod McCoy stuff. It's gonna be very interesting. Okay, it's coming. I know it. Tyree kill. No, no, it's not it. Okay, okay. Well, this is a little tease here. From a talent standpoint, Jermod McCoy is the best quarterback on the Raiders roster. And then saying something with Eric Stokes. Okay, here we go. Here we go. This is the picture. Raiders are set to get Fernando Mendoza first-team reps to help aid his development as an NFL quarterback. That's via Al Rivera. And then George Schwartz says, this is how it starts. I still believe Mendoza will start a majority of the season. So, there's that. I keep blowing up the graph. There's that. I think, you know, training camp, like I said a couple videos ago, maybe the last video I posted, when the pads come on, that's when we're really gonna find out, like, what's going on. We're gonna see the first-team offensive line. We're gonna see the first-team defensive line. We're gonna see different, you know, starting wide receiver units. We're gonna see how Mendoza gets reps compared to Aidan O'Connell, compared to Kirk Cousins. But, you know, we got a little bit of, why do I keep clicking the wrong thing? We got a little bit of Coach Gruden action here. So, let's hear what he has to say about the Raiders and the quarterback competition. Coach, let's talk about a team you're very familiar with, the Raiders. Now, they obviously drafted Fernando Mendoza number one overall. They got Kirk Cousins, Pennsylvania, as the starter right now. When could you see Mendoza taking over? Well, I can see Mendoza starting week one, or I can see Mendoza waiting until next season. I think it all depends on how training camp goes and what Clint Kubiak is thinking. I think their offensive line was a turnstile last year. There are two tackles, Forsyth and the right tackle, Glaze. If you look at pro football focus, they gave up more sacks than any combination in the league. So, I think they're going to look at a lot of things. I do know that Ashton Gente is going to benefit from Clint Kubiak in this running game. They're going to get under the center. They're going to come running off the ball, climbing on people. They're going to be better on offense. They were horrific last year, just 14 points a game, and I think Mendoza has the perfect mentor. Don't forget, Cousins had three good seasons with Clint Kubiak in Minnesota. So, I don't think that's the number one issue right now for the Raiders. They've got to get this defense humming around. They've got a new kicker, and they've got to get this offensive line competitive. I think that's the key. Kind of interesting that, you know, Coach Gruden says, they're going to be fine at quarterback. They've got Kirk Cousins, who played well with Clint Kubiak. They've got Mendoza that, you know, he didn't mention it, but they've got Aiden there, too. That's not his main concern, and he kind of listed the main concerns, and you can tell he's doing a deep dive because he said they have a new kicker, which is an interesting concern and wrinkle for us. They have to get that defense humming, and they have to be competitive with the offensive line. Now, we expect the offensive line to be way better than it was last year, but that's a low bar. For this team to take a leap, for Mendoza to feel comfortable, for Kirk Cousins to be comfortable, for Assangenti to reach his potential, this offensive line has to take significant gains. It can't go from bad to average. It has to look like it can really compete with some of the high-level defenses in this game. Not because we expect to win those games against, you know, the Seattle Seahawks when we play them, or the Buffalo Bills when we play them, but we need to have a chance at real development. You know, I'm a jazz fan, and they've been tanking for a while, and they finally pulled the plug in the tank, and they're ready to go. They've got a lot of great players on their team. But within those tanking seasons, there were a few games against really good teams where they put their best five out there to see how they stacked up, to see how Keontae George and Larry Markkinen would play when there's a lot of pressure, and they played very well, so they knew that they can keep those guys for the continuation of the rebuild. If you're not playing in crunch time in a lot of these games, or you're not competitive going into the third and fourth quarter, you don't know how good Assangenti or Brock Bowers is when the rubber hits the road. You think they're going to be good. You've seen Max Crosby play in high-level situations because he was on competitive Raider teams, but you don't know that to be the case for some of these young guys who've only been playing during the rebuild. And then once you make the playoffs, that's an even harder thing to do. Ask Justin Herbert. Ask Drake May. So, I like what Coach Gruden said. Don't worry about the quarterback situation. You have to understand that the defense needs to be good, the offensive line needs to be stable, and the special teams aspect that we don't know is going to be good or bad yet needs to all come together to even be able to understand what you have. Think about last year. We have no idea how good Assangenti is or how good our offensive linemen are, the younger guys, because it was just a shitshow. Chip Kelly was calling plays that didn't exist. Pete Carroll didn't know what he was doing and backing his son when he should have fired his son. You know, Geno Smith was throwing interceptions and fumbling all the time. So you just have no idea how good Charles Grant is or Jack Besh is. And we're going to get additions to this line just by getting healthy, getting JPJ and Colton Miller back on the field at the same time. But we don't know what these younger guys are going to do in high-pressure situations unless everybody's healthy and unless we have a legitimate chance to be competitive in these games. You don't have to win the Super Bowl right away, but you do need good players. And oh boy, Jermod McCoy is looking like he's a good player. Now before we get into this, I just want to throw it out there that about 50% of you that are watching are not yet subscribed to the channel. We're trying to hit 17,000 which is crazy. I remember just a couple years ago. We were in the low thousands. We were 2,000-3,000. Now we're at 17,000. So what's stopping you from hitting that subscribe button? It really helps out tremendously and it's free. Josh Lyle's on Raiders beat. Raiders fourth-round rookie, the favorite to start at cornerback. Jermod McCoy slid to the fourth round of the draft before being selected by the Raiders and now just four months later it sounds like McCoy may be a front-runner to start. The California Post's Vinny B discussed McCoy this week on the Raiders flagship radio station and believes a healthy McCoy will ultimately beat out Darian Porter to start at corner across from Eric Stokes. He's good to go and by all accounts he is and by all accounts he is. I'd be surprised if he doesn't win the starting job at cornerback, Bonsignor said of McCoy on Raider Nation radio Monday, nope, morning tailgate on Tuesday. Training camp is going to be so important for Jermod McCoy. Let's stay right there for a second. It's been a long time since he's actually played football. That is one thing to keep an eye on. Not so much in the health perspective, but just shaking off the rust, Bonsignor continued. It's been a long time since he's competed. Now he's going to be competing at the NFL level, so it'll be really interesting to watch his progress just getting reacclaimed to playing football, to playing cornerback at a level where the Raiders need him to play from a rough standpoint, from all of that standpoint, just getting back out there and getting back into the flow of things. Limited information has been available on McCoy's surgically repaired knee, however, reports since that draft have been optimistic concerning McCoy's recovery. Based on what has been reported, it seems like McCoy's long-term health is what steered most teams away from him on the first two days of the draft. The Raiders traded up one pick in the fourth round to take McCoy, and according to Vinny B, there were other teams that were ready to pounce on the Tennessee quarterback in the fourth round. I've talked to a couple general managers around the league who shared their intel on him, and by the way, he was not lasting very much longer in the fourth round. People were ready to pounce, Vinny B said. They took the red flag off him by that point in the draft across the league, so the Raiders did a good job of beating everybody to the punch, and that's the way it's been explained to me. It's not a right-now issue. It's potentially a longer-range issue, the longevity of it, and Todd Gurley was a name that was brought up a lot. He had suffered that devastating knee injury at Georgia, then he recovered from it, and was fantastic for a period of time in the NFL. He was good for like six or seven years. I didn't mean to do a six-seven thing, I'm so sorry. But then the longevity issue came into play for Gurley. People are looking at all the signs about the knee. Is it good? Is he good to go? It's not that, it's longevity issues. And by the way, Todd Gurley's a running back. Jermod McCoy is not going to be running and pivoting and pressing nearly as much as Todd Gurley did. Now, we don't know the severity of the Todd Gurley injury versus the Jermod McCoy injury. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. I'm not really anything, if you think about it. Just a guy wearing a hat and buttons on his shirt talking about the Raiders. But Jermod McCoy, I've been beating this drama. People are probably sick of hearing me saying it, but I'm gonna say it again. The path to all pros. How do you become the Philadelphia Eagles where you're just churning out player after player after player? How do you become the Rams? Besides trading all your picks for really good players and hit on guy after guy and continue to be successful? Well, you have to have a good scouting department, a good GM. I think for the first time in a long time, we have that. You have to have a plan in place with the head coach and it sounds like reports are that Clint Kubiak has come into the building with a plan for Jack and Dante and Jermod McCoy and Fernando and all these guys. You've got to have people in the building that can teach these guys how to play at a high level. For Jermod McCoy, you have Eric Stokes. You know, for Trayden Stooks, you have Jeremy Chant. For Keiron Crawford, you have Max Crosby. For Fernando Mendoza, you have Kirk Cousins. You see how it's all lining up? And then you have to get lucky. Unfortunately for Jermod McCoy, he suffered a devastating knee injury. That's horrible. That's terrible for him. But fortunately for us and maybe for him, because maybe this is the best scenario for him, we reaped the benefit of him falling in the draft because of that knee injury and we were willing to take a chance on a kid that is going to be healthy in the short term. From the second he stepped on that field, and I know we're doing the Dante Thornton thing, but there's a difference between him and Dante. Same college, right? From the second he stepped on that field, padless, the reports are, okay, you could see why this guy was known to be probably the best corner in the draft when he's healthy. He's a freak of nature. He's flying all over the field and people said that about Dante and people are saying that about Jermod. The difference is Dante was drafted in the fourth round because he was a fourth round talent. Jermod McCoy was not looked at as a fourth round talent. He was looked at as a first round talent who happened to be drafted late in day three or early in day three. I guess, right? Yeah. Because of the knee injury. And Todd Gurley, I mean, let's look up Todd Gurley's stats here. Because again, I don't know the severity of his injury versus Jermod's, but Todd Gurley was like a legitimate top three running back for at least five years. Let's pull this up here. Todd Gurley, 6'1", he's only 31 right now. That's crazy. He only played in the league six years, okay? He was, I mean, a thousand yards, 8'85", 1,300, 1,200, 8'7". Yeah, I mean for one, two, three, four, five years, he was a legitimate playmaker. Obviously, it petered off at the end, but look at these two years. He had 1,300 yards, 13 touchdowns, 1,200 yards, 17 touchdowns. Caught 10 touchdowns those two seasons. I mean, really good stuff. There were some bumps and some bruises. He only played 12 games his first year. He played 16 games his second year, 15 his third year, 14, 15, 15. I mean, he never missed a significant amount of time. Did he miss a year, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20? No. He never missed a significant amount of time, which is interesting too. He played in all these games, you know? He just, the knee fell apart. He was AP All-Pro, Rookie of the Year, second in MVP voting, third Offensive Player of the Year, Offensive Player of the Year, Pro Bowler, Pro Bowler, three-time Pro Bowler. If you told me that Jermod McCoy has, you know, if Todd Gurley played at a decent level for six years, if you told me that Jermod McCoy has an eight-year career, and for four of those, he's a Pro Bowler, and one of them, he's a potential Defensive Player of the Year candidate, I mean, this guy's a fourth-round pick. I would much rather have a fourth-round pick be a three-time Pro Bowler, but only play for seven years, than a first-round pick be a one-time Pro Bowler, but play for 12. Does that make sense? I think that makes perfect sense to me, and I'm very excited to see what happens with Jermod McCoy. So, make sure you're doing your due diligence to go down into the comments, and go down into the description, and sign up to become a $5 or $10 patron or YouTube member. Instagram's up there. 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