Heisman To 1.01: Where Fernando Mendoza Fits Among Heisman No. 1 Picks

When the Las Vegas Raiders made Fernando Mendoza the first pick of the 2026 NFL Draft on April 23, they were buying into one of the rarest profiles in football history. Mendoza had just done three things in the same season that almost never converge: he won the Heisman Trophy, he won a national championship, and he became the No. 1 overall pick. By the count from the Heisman Trust, he is only the third player ever to complete that trifecta, joining Cam Newton (2010 Heisman, 2011 No. 1 to Carolina) and Joe Burrow (2019 Heisman, 2020 No. 1 to Cincinnati). That is the company a 1.01 Heisman winner keeps.

The broader history of Heisman winners going first overall is itself a short, specific list. The very first Heisman winner, Jay Berwanger, was the first overall pick of the inaugural 1936 NFL Draft. In the modern era the names cluster: Newton in 2011, then a three-year run of Baker Mayfield (2018), Kyler Murray (2019), and Burrow (2020) — the first time Heisman winners went first overall in three consecutive drafts. Bryce Young (2021 Heisman) went No. 1 to Carolina in 2023, and Caleb Williams (2022 Heisman) went No. 1 to Chicago in 2024. Mendoza now extends that line, but the national-title overlay is what separates him from Mayfield, Murray, Young, and Williams, none of whom won a championship in their Heisman season.

Mendoza's path to the podium was a transfer story, which is increasingly the modern norm. He spent three seasons at California — including a redshirt year — throwing for 4,712 yards, 30 touchdowns, and 16 interceptions across 20 games, with a 16-touchdown, six-interception, 3,004-yard 2024. Then he entered the portal and landed at Indiana for 2025, where everything changed. Under Curt Cignetti, Mendoza set an Indiana single-season record with 41 passing touchdowns, threw for 3,535 yards, and posted a 72.0 percent completion rate — also a program record — while leading the Hoosiers to a 16-0 season.

The championship itself carries a novelist's symmetry. Indiana, a program that had finished 2-10, 4-8, and 3-9 in the seasons before Cignetti arrived, won the first national title in school history by beating Miami 27-21 in the College Football Playoff title game. The game was played in Miami. Mendoza is from Miami. The Hurricanes never recruited him. He was named the championship game's Offensive MVP, and his fourth-down touchdown run in the fourth quarter provided the winning margin. The 16-0 finish put Indiana alongside 1894 Yale and 2019 North Dakota State as the only 16-0 major-college champions.

For the Raiders, the pick also slots Mendoza into a franchise lineage that is unusually rich in Heisman pedigree. He is the fifth Heisman Trophy winner the Raiders organization has drafted, following Marcus Allen (1982), Bo Jackson (1987), Tim Brown (1988), and Charles Woodson (1998). Three of those four — Allen, Brown, and Woodson — are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The franchise has now used a draft pick on a Heisman winner in five different decades, and Mendoza, who will wear No. 15, was symbolically handed that number by former Raiders quarterback and two-time Super Bowl winner Tom Flores.

The cautionary half of the Heisman-at-1.01 history is that the trophy does not guarantee the pro outcome. Newton made a Super Bowl and won an MVP; Burrow has been an elite NFL starter; but Mayfield needed a second franchise to find his footing, Murray's Arizona tenure was uneven, and Young's first two seasons in Carolina were rocky enough that his draft slot became a referendum on the entire evaluation process. A Heisman tells you a player was the best in college football for one season. It does not tell you he will be the best, or even a starter, in a league where the median first overall quarterback hits roughly half the time.

What Mendoza brings that the recent Heisman busts lacked is the winning résumé and the late-blooming developmental arc. He did not peak as a freshman phenom; he became a national champion in his fourth college season after a school change, which is a profile more like Burrow's late ascent at LSU than Young's early stardom at Alabama. The Raiders are betting that the trajectory — improvement every year, a championship at the end — is the signal, and that the Heisman is the confirmation rather than the cause. The history says the bet is reasonable. The history also says it is far from certain.