Inside the Film Room: This year's QB 'big riser' can be found in Bloomington, Indiana

Wait, is he really a big riser if he's already awesome?

The 2025 NFL Draft may have just come to a close, but the grind never stops. Everybody is always looking for the next big quarterback riser, and I’ve already found yours for the 2026 NFL Draft: Indiana Football’s Fernando Mendoza.

Under-recruited, under-recognized, and still under the radar.

I’ve seen a lot of 2026 NFL Draft quarterback primers and early rankings already, and nearly all of them exclude even mentioning the Redshirt Junior from Miami, Florida.

He joins his brother in Bloomington, Indiana, and looks to follow in the footsteps of Kurtis Rourke and build off of a playoff-berthing season from a year ago. Indiana didn’t rest this offseason and looks poised to come back even better next season.

And that starts with the addition of the tantalizing Mendoza.

A transfer coming over from Cal, his second season as the starting quarterback with the Golden Bears, Mendoza cooked up quite a bit of magic despite a lackluster program around him. That may just be evident by every bit of talent bleeding from Berkeley in the transfer portal.

Standing at 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, Mendoza immediately caught my eye when turning on his tape and charting his body of work from 2024. The box score isn’t overly sexy, throwing for just over 3,000 yards and 16 touchdowns with six interceptions, but the tape is captivating.

So much so that I’m already ready to throw a bold, scorching hot take out there on the Monday right after the draft. Let’s have some fun and get off the ground for next year’s draft class with guns ablazin’:

Mendoza has every tool to be the top quarterback in the 2026 NFL Draft and the first player selected in one calendar year.

Let’s talk about it.

Fernando Mendoza: Forever under-the-radar

This past offseason, Mendoza was seen as one of the top quarterbacks in the portal—and by some, including Indiana. The Hoosiers already had a head start with the Mendoza family, recruiting his brother Alberto, who is currently slated as the third-stringer on the depth chart in Bloomington.

This was enough for Mendoza to choose Indiana even after he was courted by his hometown Miami Hurricanes, the Georgia Bulldogs, and more. This is a stark contrast from his initial recruitment, though.

Out of high school, Mendoza was ranked as the 134th quarterback recruit and the 250th best recruit in the state of Florida. His recruitment didn’t even get kick-started until late. Cal was only one of two FBS offers (his hometown Florida International the other), and he didn’t even get an official visit there until late January of 2022. However, Cal offered on the spot, and he committed just days later.

Before that? Mendoza only gathered buzz from academically prestigious schools and was even committed to Yale before Cal swooped in late. Mendoza’s other offers came only from Lehigh, Bryant, and Penn.

That should raise a green flag when a player gets courted by almost exclusively high-standard institutions, including UC Berkeley.

This nature of flying under the radar is about to end for Mendoza, though. He’s about to explode onto the scene as we wipe the slate clean and prepare for another draft and the work that goes along with it.