The Las Vegas Raiders’ signing of veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins on Thursday confirms what the team has in mind for Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza—the presumed No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft on April 23.
Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy after leading Indiana to a first-ever national championship in the 2025 season. He’s expected to turn around the Raiders, who went 3–14 last season, as any highly drafted quarterback would be.
It’s also a largely failed experiment in the NFL, as many top-pick quarterbacks fall short. Peyton and Eli Manning were the exceptions with their respective teams in the 2000s and 2010s, as both won Super Bowls with the teams that drafted them.
New Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak told reporters on Tuesday, via NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero, that he would want a rookie quarterback to “sit behind a mature adult” instead of being the starter right away. Cousins is 37, and he has 44,700 yards passing for 298 touchdowns in his 14-year career.
Las Vegas is paying Cousins like a starter with a five-year, $172 million contract. He will get $11.3 million guaranteed.
Cousins spent the past two seasons with the Atlanta Falcons on a four-year, $180 million deal, but his time there didn’t go as planned. The Falcons benched him in 2024 for then-rookie Michael Penix Jr., and the former Washington Huskies standout kept the starting job for 2025.
Cousins picked up playing time last season after Penix went down with an injury, but the former Michigan State standout didn’t have his best season with 1,721 yards passing for 10 touchdowns in 10 games played.
He will get a chance to bounce back in Las Vegas as the starter. Cousins also knows well the value of a rookie sitting behind a veteran, which he did himself when he played for the Washington Redskins. His opportunity arrived after an injury to quarterback Robert Griffin III.
Cousins took over the starting job and became a Pro Bowl quarterback for Washington before he signed the first big contract of his career with the Minnesota Vikings in 2018. He recently talked with Kevin Clark of the “This is Football!” podcast about the importance of a rookie sitting.
“Well, I do think that there was a time when Aaron Rodgers got drafted and sat for three years. Carson Palmer got drafted and sat for a year. There have been teams that have said that was the plan, and then Week 4, 5, 6, the guy’s playing,” Cousins said.
What trajectory fits Mendoza best is the question in Las Vegas. The Raiders have not produced a winning season since 2021, and the team has cycled through three coaches and four quarterbacks in that span.
“So I also think there was a time when coaches stuck around and a quarterback learned a system and played in that system most of his career,” Cousins said. “So the guys who are on the back end and are able to build up that experience can deal with that maybe a little more.
“But the young guys you wanna give as much continuity as you can and just hasn’t been the environment many guys, including a Sam Darnold, have been given,” Cousins continued. “When you’re asking a talented player to kind of rewire his brain and do something different, he’s not gonna be the same talented player because he’s gonna be a step slower and he’s gonna be learning and thinking again.”
Darnold, who started for the Vikings the year Cousins left Minnesota, is an example of a high-pick quarterback flaming out with his first team. Things didn’t go well for Darnold as a No. 3 pick with the New York Jets in 2018, and his career looked lost as a draft bust and backup until his career year as a Viking in 2024.
Darnold then landed a Cousins-like contract with the Seattle Seahawks in 2025 and led the team to a Super Bowl win. Neither Cousins nor the Raiders would want Mendoza to be another top-pick quarterback who buckled under the weight of rebuilding a team as a rookie.
“You wanna take that thinking out of it,” Cousins said. “The more you can be a Tom Brady or a Drew Brees, who’s been in the same system for 15 years, the better quarterback play you’re gonna get.”
Brady spent 20 years with the New England Patriots, and his time began as a backup before his six Super Bowl wins with the team. Brees likewise didn’t start right away with the San Diego Chargers, but he thrived and won a Super Bowl in his 15 years with the New Orleans Saints.
If the Raiders take Mendoza this month as forecast, his chance to sit behind Cousins will give him a shot at producing in a more stable setting for the Raiders long term.
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