Blog: Raiders have the obvious, easy choice at No. 1 in the draft; select Mendoza and never look back

The former IU quarterback is the no-brainer selection at the top.

If you’re the Las Vegas Raiders, who just left town along with the rest of the league after the NFL Combine, you don’t overthink it.

You submit your selection about 30 seconds after Roger Goodell opens the proceedings, and hand in a card that reads, “Fernando Mendoza.” (Well, it’s not a card anymore, but you get the idea.)

Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t twist yourself into a mental pretzel. The answer to many of the Raiders’ problems is right there, in their hands. Just a matter of pulling the trigger.

Sometimes, NFL executives try to prove they’re the smartest guys in the room and reach for a pick whose selection runs counter to the prevailing opinion. This isn’t one of those times. This is Andrew-Luck-with-the-first-pick easy. My dog could make this selection. He’s a very smart dog, for the record.

Do I think Mendoza is a generational talent like Luck? Not exactly. Not right now. But you see how far he’s come in just one year under Curt Cignetti and his coaching staff, what’s to say he won’t continue to grow and develop at a similar rate under NFL tutelage? What kind of impact might his idol, Tom Brady, have on the former IU quarterback?

I look at Mendoza, and I think his best comparison is to Jared Goff, a fine quarterback, although Mendoza has better wheels. Another decent comp: Kirk Cousins, who made himself hundreds of millions in this league. That said, he could end up being elite. The traits are there. The mental acuity is there. The professional approach is there.

One thing about Mendoza, he won’t get into shenanigans on the Las Vegas Strip. He’ll go out with the boys for a couple of beers, but we all have a pretty good idea, if he’s not a choir boy exactly, he’s awfully close. Some observers seem to think it’s an act, that it’s off-putting, but this is who Mendoza is and has been from the very beginning. This is a young man who brought his Heisman to his Bloomington church to share it with the clergymen. He’s a good egg, is what I’m saying.

I seem to remember a time when draft analysts questioned how high the ceiling was for Peyton Manning, noted he didn’t have the raw athleticism and arm talent that was possessed by Ryan Leaf. Roughly half the league went on record saying they would have drafted Leaf, whose life and career would disintegrate at a unfortunate and dizzying rate.

I remember the 2011 draft when Cam Newton was the consensus No. 1 pick out of Auburn. A few weeks before the draft, Newton told veteran scribe Peter King that he wanted to become a brand, specifically “a football player, entertainer and icon.”

That comment inspired great gnashing of teeth among NFL personnel, and there were rumblings that the quarterback-needy Carolina Panthers would bypass Newton and go for another, “safer” pick.

Turned out, he did go first, did become a very good NFL quarterback who won an MVP and went to the Super Bowl in 2015.

If I’m the Raiders, the name already has been scribbled on the card. No questions, no hesitation – even if Dan Orlovsky, a lonely voice in the wilderness, believes Alabama’s Ty Simpson has more impressive tape than Mendoza. Take him first and enjoy the next 10-plus years.

He’s not just the safe pick, the obvious pick, he’s far and away the best pick. Seven of the last eight No. 1 picks have been quarterbacks and 21 of the last 28. It needs to happen again.

Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.