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Fernando Mendoza

grover said:
@TheOriginalCane I noticed you disagreed with my post that Mendoza is a heck of a step down from Mateer. I'm genuinely interested in your opinion. What I see is a guy with little mobility, an average arm, and while he has plus processing, it's not elite. I see a game manager. What am I missing?
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I have no idea what you are seeing. Mendoza has mobility and a **** good arm. I saw it in person, I saw it up close. And his processing is great. You want to watch a couple of 2 minute highlight reels, knock yourself out. The reality is that if Cal had a decent kicker, they could be a 10-win team.

Lost to F$U by 5 - missed 2 FGs
Lost to Miami by 1
Lost to Pitt by 2 - missed 1 FG (missed two 2-pt. conversions)
Lost to NC State by 1 - missed 1 FG
Lost to Syracuse by 8 - missed 1 FG

The only game in which Cal was blown out was the last game against SMU. They definitely win 3 more games, possibly the Miami game, and are within a TD of beating Syracuse, if only they had a kicker.

Mendoza enrolled at Cal in 2022. He played in 2023 against Pac 12 competition, 7 conference games and a bowl game. His first 4 games against Pac 12 competition were all against ranked teams (Cal lost all four) and Cal scored 40 points or more in two of those games. His only horrible game was against #6 Oregon.

Then, in 2024, he plays nearly the entire season as the starter and does pretty well against ACC competition, throwing for over 3,000 yards.

Now, you compare that to Mateer, who also enrolled in 2022, but has really only played in 2024. So he has 1 less year of playing time, and while he looked great, he was not playing Pac-12 or ACC opponents. Again, Mateer is the better runner and he has a stronger arm, but they produced similar stats.

Mendoza 2024 - 68.7% accuracy, 3,000 yards, 16 TDs, 6 INTs, 41 sacks
Mateer 2024 - 64.6% accuracy, 3,100 yards, 29 TDs, 7 INTs, 31 sacks

Mendoza did what he did with a sub-par OL and WRs (GREAT running back) and was a defective kicker from taking his team to a 9 or 10 win season in a P4 conference.

Mateer did what he did with a number of OLs and WRs who are good enough to Portal out of Washington State, while getting 2 more wins than Mendoza got for Cal, but against lesser non-P4 competition.

In spite of all that, my preference was for Mateer. He chose to be a people-pleaser and go to a school with a worse team than Miami and worse prospects in the Portal in order to make his family and his former coaches happy. OK, that's his choice. But I do not see some sort of huge drop-off from Mateer to Mendoza. Could Mateer have two amazing years after this, and Mendoza not do as well? Anything is possible. But with Mendoza I see a guy who has consistently played ranked P4 opponents and done well. One of Mateer's worst games was against WSU's only ranked opponent, Boise.

The problem with Miami fans is that they'll allow guys like Ward or Mateer to outplay their HS rankings, but not Mendoza (plus, Mendoza gets docked for the name of his HS alma mater). Mendoza has put up pretty good results in 2 years for one of the worst Pac-12/ACC schools.

Watch Mateer play in person. He has some of those same "I'm not a physical specimen" deceptive traits that Ken Dorsey had. He's smart. He escapes quite a bit. He hits guys with accuracy (even though he hasn't had a very good WR corps).

Cam Ward has a cannon for an arm, and I watched him miss a bunch of easy, short, wide-open passes this year. Traits are great, if you can make them work for you. Give me a guy pushing 70% accuracy with the speed of Miami WRs and RBs and I guarantee we have a ****-ton of YAC.

And as for running, we don't need a ton of rushing yards from our QB, we just need a decent threat. Cam didn't have a lot of rushing yards, and we have some very good RBs. WSU was not so blessed with great RBs in 2024.

Mendoza is NOT such a huge drop-off from Mateer, at least at this current time.
 
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AlexCane said:
But, honestly, if he wasn't a Miami kid from a legacy school, no one would be impressed with him. What he do against us besides throw a bunch of screens that went for huge gains? He blew a huge lead and couldn't move the ball at all late. And he has limited mobility.
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Bull****. I didn't even know he went to Columbus until the Miami-Cal game.

What he has done on the field in 2023-2024 for some not-so-great Cal teams is remarkable. Again, with a KICKER, it's quite possible that Cal would have finished ahead of Miami in the ACC this year.

That's a fact.
 
DMoney said:
So far, I’ve heard no to Mendoza, no to Beck, no to Ewers.

Aside from Cam Ward and John Mateer, who is worthy of playing QB for our program that just won 10 games for the second time in two decades?
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I'm not really a fan of Mendoza, but I'd take him in a heartbeat over the alternative of starting Emory.

There's also very few options left at QB.

Unless we're gonna be poaching someone else's starter who hasn't hit the Portal yet, Mendoza is really the only viable option available to us right now.

And given the connection already in place, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
 
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AlexCane said:
I'll take Beck and Ewers before Mendoza, but I think the answer is that there aren't a whole lot of options. The good news is that I think QB play next year across the board is way down.
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I think something else to consider is at what expense? I like Ewers. Is he next level? **** no but he is very good. The problem is at what cost? I think Ewers would command close to Cam money and he isn’t worth that because we have only so much money and so many holes. I think Beck is very good but he had Mike Bobo as his play caller this year and unless we can get him cheap, that injury scares me. Mendoza is okay, has proven he can start in the ACC but nothing exciting but if I gotta choose between him and Emory, that’s an easy call.
 
DMoney said:
So far, I’ve heard no to Mendoza, no to Beck, no to Ewers.

Aside from Cam Ward and John Mateer, who is worthy of playing QB for our program that just won 10 games for the second time in two decades?
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Archie Manning, please.
 
Gransapo said:
****ting on Fernando Mendoza while *** licking every **** backup QB we have had hold a clipboard in the last 15 + years.

Coming off our best/funniest regular season in 20 years.

****ting on Cristobal, who delivered said season, when we had Shannon, Golden, and Manny Diaz stink up the sideline for years on end.

And having a great portal so far.

Man, CiS is a **** of a place.
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It's bizarre.

In 2023 and 2024, Mendoza actually STARTED GAMES in P4.

In 2023, Emory started two games when TVD was hurt, and while admirable in effort and outcome, nobody would argue that either of those games looked like ANYTHING that Mendoza accomplished in either 2023 or 2024 at Cal. In 2024, Emory barely played.

But somehow...SOMEHOW...we have people projecting some sort of magical metamorphosis of Emory's abilities, while continuing to pretend like Mendoza 2025 is the same QB he was at Columbus.

And I love Emory. Kid has heart and brains. He's likely to be a future coach. But come on.

It's insane.
 
IndayArtHauz said:
Of that group, I’d pick Mendoza.

But the question needs to be properly framed: after barely winning 10 games with a generational QB and an elite offense, is there a QB available who can come close to reproducing the results of 2024, let alone improve upon them? People look at 2024 and rightly assess we needed the best QB in college football to miss the ACC Championship and the playoff. They also look at who we are losing on offense and quickly realize the next guy’s job will be harder than Cam’s was.

Now, it’s possible to improve upon the next season’s result with a lesser QB. Tennessee won in ‘98 with Tee Martin, the year *after* Peyton Manning left. But that roster was loaded on both sides of the ball, with a proven staff.

People aren’t indiscriminately dumping on decent QBs. They recognize it took Cam freaking Ward to win 10 games, with a better offensive roster than we will have in 2025, and question how QBs who are 2-3 levels below him will produce similar results. Let alone reach the playoff.
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Simple answer is the offense will take a step back by 8-10 ppg vs P4 but there is no reason our defense can't improve by 8-10 ppg vs P4 as well.

Get Lucas and our secondary went from major weakness to likely strength.

We will also run the ball more and have less possessions to defend.
 
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Memnon said:
I'm not really a fan of Mendoza, but I'd take him in a heartbeat over the alternative of starting Emory.

There's also very few options left at QB.

Unless we're gonna be poaching someone else's starter who hasn't hit the Portal yet, Mendoza is really the only viable option available to us right now.

And given the connection already in place, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
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This is the most reasonable stance I’ve seen on the subject…
 
DMoney said:
So far, I’ve heard no to Mendoza, no to Beck, no to Ewers.

Aside from Cam Ward and John Mateer, who is worthy of playing QB for our program that just won 10 games for the second time in two decades?
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If that's the case there's no QBs left to even get then for 2025. Oh boy it's gonna be a long year
 
I don't see Ewers hitting the Portal given Texas is likely gonna make the National title game.

But he looks like a shot fighter; Maybe a change in Offense could reinvigorate his capabilities, but throughout this entire season, outside of the Michigan & Florida games, he's looked extremely pedestrian.

There are throws that he's blatantly not making in his progressions, either because he's been told not to, or (even worse) he's scared to make them.

There were multiple plays in the Arkansas & in both UGA games where he was completely gunshy. He had a man running WIDE OPEN on a post pattern against Arkansas & he literally just refused to throw it. It would've been an easy walk in the end zone TD, because they had caught Arkansas slipping in a Cover 2 look & the Safety had drifted over out of his shell leaving the middle of the field wide open. Ewers saw him, had time & just flat out didn't throw it.
 
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AlexCane said:
You can't really believe that can you?

You think we beat Cal, VT, and UL with Mendoza? No way. Heck, even the Duke game is iffy without Cam. Teams follow the QB. A mediocre QB puts us in a mediocre position.
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VT game was 14 pts closer than it needed to be because the QB didn't protect the ball. We lose to Cal with a game manager at QB, because holding the ball on offense doesn't matter when your D is giving up multiple 50yard TDs. UL you're right too. However I think if we ran the ball a heck of a lot more against GTech and Syracuse we'd have won at least one of those games, and it wouldn't have been dependent on the QB carrying us on his back. So that's 1 more loss. That's what I meant when I said there wouldn't have been much difference record wise.

I love Cam, but I thought we should have run the ball a lot more this year considering the state of our defense and what we had (and didn't have at WR). We had an otherworldly QB but we didn't have a gamebreaker outside at WR. We relied on Dawson scheming guys open down field (which hurt us in the VT game when Cam just assumed they'd be open and they weren't) and X making miraculous catch-and-runs. We couldn't just tell Horton or George to run down the sideline and throw them a 50-50 ball like Howard can do with Jeremiah Smith. This hurt us big time in the Georgia Tech game when we were anemic scoring on drives inside their territory.
 
bobbydigius said:
I think something else to consider is at what expense? I like Ewers. Is he next level? **** no but he is very good. The problem is at what cost? I think Ewers would command close to Cam money and he isn’t worth that because we have only so much money and so many holes. I think Beck is very good but he had Mike Bobo as his play caller this year and unless we can get him cheap, that injury scares me. Mendoza is okay, has proven he can start in the ACC but nothing exciting but if I gotta choose between him and Emory, that’s an easy call.
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You know what? It ain't our money. There's no budget.

Put it this way.

I'm not sure what these kids command, but if you think Ewers > Mendoza > Emory, how much more would you pay for an extra win or two or three? $100,000 per win?
 
Memnon said:
I'm not really a fan of Mendoza, but I'd take him in a heartbeat over the alternative of starting Emory.

There's also very few options left at QB.

Unless we're gonna be poaching someone else's starter who hasn't hit the Portal yet, Mendoza is really the only viable option available to us right now.

And given the connection already in place, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
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Seriously the staff better quit playing around portal ends this week no other Serious QB is in the portal for us except Mendoza that can win you 10 games depending on how we close on portal targets
 
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Odysseus said:
Seriously the staff better quit playing around portal ends this week no other Serious QB is in the portal for us except Mendoza that can win you 10 games depending on how we close on portal targets
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Not really

Every team still playing, guys have five days after last game to enter Portal.
 
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