It’s no secret that the quarterback position is the primary reason for a top-five draft pick being as valuable as it is in the National Football League. After all, only seven of the last 25 first-overall draft picks since the turn of the century have been a position other than quarterback.
Advertisement
The desire to win has never been more prevalent, and that’s resulted in teams both drafting and then promptly discarding the signal callers that they can’t develop. That process has resulted in some late-bloomer phenomena in recent years, like the resurgences of Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield. And according to Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, if teams had a bit more patience, they would likely see some better results start to develop.
“These quarterbacks are going to such bad teams. Most of the time, the quarterbacks are not the type of quarterbacks that can elevate your franchise right away. And they don’t have enough around them to play up to their standards. That’s the part that actually sucks, and then, most of the time, they also don’t have the motherf**king patience to develop said quarterbacks that they pick with the first pick.”
With the 2026 NFL Draft now starting to creep into focus slowly, analysts and oddsmakers alike have already begun to guarantee that the Las Vegas Raiders will be calling Fernando Mendoza’s name at the top of the night on April 23rd. That would make the Indiana Hoosier the fourth consecutive quarterback to be selected with the first overall pick, and while he was certainly good enough to win the 2025 Heisman trophy, Johnson is hoping that Mendoza will be good enough to win the patience of the Raiders.
“You know you’re getting a quarterback,” the former Cincinnati Bengal exclaimed during the most recent episode of his Nightcap podcast. “Understand what you are picking. You know good and g*d damn well if you have a franchise-altering quarterback or not with the first pick, because you’re watching film. You know that, if you bring him in, what it’s going to look like if you know you ain’t got nothing for him to work with.”
A top-tier running back like Ashton Jenty, as well as an equally talented tight end like Brock Bowers, should help to create a safe and effective environment for an incoming rookie like Mendoza, but that doesn’t mean that there’s going to be some immediate wins either.
Between the departure of Jakobi Meyers, the impending exit of Maxx Crosby, and the already lackluster state of the roster as a whole, victories are still going to be hard for the Raiders to come by.
Nevertheless, if the franchise is willing to stick with it and Mendoza is able to justify his high-end draft price, then Las Vegas may finally be able to pull itself out of the red and push its chips towards a playoff bid in the next few years.
