Fernando Mendoza didn’t try to dress up the rough edges after the Las Vegas Raiders’ preseason win over the Houston Texans. He said exactly what the night looked like: a quarterback still learning how thin the line is at the NFL level.
Mendoza played the full first half Thursday night and finished 8 of 15 for 86 yards with one interception across five drives. That turnover came in the second quarter, and Houston turned it into a pick-six. After the game, the top overall pick in the 2026 draft was blunt about what went wrong and what comes next.
“The margins are so small,” Mendoza said postgame, via ESPN. “One tiny mistake can lead to catastrophe. So I want to make sure that I best serve my teammates and get better from these experiences.
“It was not a good throw. We were not on the same page, and it was an interception.
I came away with that there’s a lot more learning to do. And that although maybe you had a lot of success at another level, this level is a whole step further.”
That kind of honesty fits the moment for Mendoza, who arrived in Las Vegas after a standout college career at Indiana and plenty of expectation attached to him. The Raiders clearly see him as a centerpiece. But Thursday showed the other side of that jump: the growing pains that come with moving into the league.
The Texans had the better of the first half and went to the locker room up 20-3. Las Vegas, though, flipped the script after halftime and finished the game on a 19-0 run to pull out the preseason victory.
The Raiders’ ground game did the heavy lifting in the comeback. Dylan Laube, Dare Ogunbowale and Aidan O’Connell all scored rushing touchdowns.
Las Vegas has one more preseason game left, a matchup with the San Francisco 49ers on Aug. 27 at 8 p.m. ET.
The regular season follows at home against the Miami Dolphins on Sept. 13 at 4:25 p.m. ET.
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