Silver And Black Pride
Up next in Silver and Black Pride’s Mendoza Mania series is the only 300-yard performance from Fernando Mendoza’s final College Football season, as the Indiana Hoosiers took down the Michigan State Spartans 38-13 in Week 8.
Statistically, this was the No. 1 pick of the 2026 NFL draft’s best performance of the season, completing 24 of 28 pass attempts (85.7 percent) for 332 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. According to Pro Football Focus, one of those incompletions was due to a drop, and he tossed a couple of “big-time” throws to make the outing even more efficient and impressive.
So the negative plays were few and far between in this outing, allowing us to focus on the positives in this breakdown of the new Las Vegas Raiders quarterback’s performance and to dive into how his arm strength stood out in East Lansing, Michigan.
Beyond bombing the ball down the field, one way that Mendoza showed off his arm strength in this game was by putting velocity on his short to intermediate throws to beat coverage.
It’s third and 12 here, and Indiana runs a variation of four verts from a two-by-two formation. The outside receivers run go routes that they can convert into curls, as Elijah Sarratt does at the bottom of the screen, and the slot receivers run seam routes. However, Michigan State plays quarters coverage, which is a good defense for the offense’s play call.
The outside corners have the freedom to play in press coverage or not, since they’re essentially in man coverage, it’s just a matter of what they’re comfortable with. The two above are good examples of that, with the corner at the top playing press against Omar Cooper Jr. and staying in Cooper’s hip, while the corner at the bottom is in off coverage and stays on top of Sarratt to force the curl route.
So, the defense takes away the quarterback’s two one-on-one matchups, forcing him to move onto the slots, where the coverage has a pair of high-low brackets. The two underneath defenders are responsible for covering any short routes from the slot receivers or getting a reroute and passing the wideouts off to the safeties against a deep route, which both execute well on this play.
That leaves a tight window between the second and third levels of the defense for Mendoza to hit to pick up the first down. Also, the timing on the routes is thrown off because of the reroutes, meaning the ball will be a little later than normal or what would be ideal to throw into the window. As a result, it’s going to take a fastball to beat the coverage/safety and move the chains.
Luckily, Mendoza rears back and throws some heat to get the ball to his man before the safety can make a play on it or jar the pass loose with a big hit. Also, the placement of this throw is perfect, away from the defender and right in the...
