NFL Draft: From nearly quitting to No. 1 — the stunning rise of Fernando Mendoza

A few weeks into his first season playing tackle football, Fernando Mendoza told his parents that he wanted to quit.

The 10-year-old Cuban-American boy who occasionally stuttered when he spoke was struggling to make friends with his new teammates or to elbow his way into the competition to earn playing time at quarterback.

“In fourth grade, I was a new kid on the park football team,” Mendoza recalled in December while delivering his acceptance speech after winning the Heisman Trophy. “Didn’t know a single teammate, and was fourth on the depth chart. By midseason, I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to quit.”

Thankfully for Mendoza, his mom and dad aren’t the type of parents who would let one of their boys quit without finishing what he started. Fernando and Elsa Mendoza insisted that their eldest son return to the South Miami Grey Ghosts and prove what he could do, a decision that helped him learn to overcome the obstacles he would face throughout his teenage years and paved the way for one of football’s most remarkable underdog stories.

The same kid who began his tackle football career buried on his team’s quarterback depth chart blossomed into college football’s best player. The same kid whose first coaches envisioned him as a run-stuffing defensive end went on to quarterback long-struggling Indiana to its first national title. The same kid who once begged his parents to let him walk away from football is now the overwhelming favorite to be the first player taken in this week’s NFL Draft.

“He made up his mind that he was not going to quit and he became a fierce competitor and a leader,” Grey Ghosts head coach Johnny Zeigler told Yahoo Sports. “You could see it in him before he left this park. That kid was going to be someone special.”

‘I can’t do this’

Fernando Mendoza may have grown up less than a mile from the campus of the University of Miami, but there was one thing that stuck from being born in Boston while his father was completing his medical residency there. He idolized Tom Brady, from his rise from sixth-round draft pick to seven-time Super Bowl champion, to the way he conducted himself off the field.

When Mendoza grew old enough to show interest in playing sports, there was little doubt what path he wanted to take. He didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of his mom, a former University of Miami tennis player, or his dad, a former high school offensive lineman and college rowing champion. He wanted to sling the football like Brady.

Mendoza often credits his mom with teaching him and his younger brother Alberto how to throw, but the truth is that Elsa was smart enough to know her limitations. As her boys began to grow more serious about football, she put them in camps and flag football leagues and searched for coaches who could teach them proper throwing mechanics and footwork.

On a summer day in South Miami 13 years ago, Mendoza showed up to his first practice with the Grey Ghosts eager for a new challenge. He hoped to earn the chance to quarterback the Grey Ghosts’ 10-and-under team, but the new environment proved to be a bigger culture shock than he expected.

It wasn’t just the transition from flag to tackle football that rattled the eldest Mendoza brother. Or the speed of the other players’ on the Grey Ghosts’ talent-laden roster. Mendoza also was the gawky new kid who didn’t know any of his teammates or coaches.

“He was very timid, very shy,” Zeigler said. “Our program is a tough program, an inner-city program, so I think that might have played a part in it, him being a Cuban American and he’s coming over in a predominantly Black park.”

When Mendoza summoned the courage to raise his hand in front of the whole team and announce that he wanted to play quarterback, the coaches’ tepid response added to his misery. Zeigler and his staff watched the strong-armed but slow-footed newcomer throw a few balls … and then named him QB4.

Part of the coaching staff’s thought process was that the Grey Ghosts were loaded with proven playmakers at quarterback. Their starter was a kid named Jalen Brown, a blur of an athlete with sprinter’s speed and a knack for making defenders miss in space. Behind him were other dual-threat quarterbacks who had been with the Grey Ghosts longer and had already gained the coaching staff’s trust.

The challenge of preparing a newcomer to play quarterback also factored into the decision that Zeigler and his assistants made. They preferred to try to mold Mendoza into a defensive end or tight end, both easier positions to learn in a few short weeks.

Between the unwanted position switch, the tough love from his coaches and the lack of familiar faces on the team, Mendoza felt like he didn’t belong.

“He was begging his dad to take him home,” Zeigler said. “He told him, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want this.’”

As Grey Ghosts offensive coordinator Roderick Ryals put it, “We were worried he might not be coming back.”

Conversations between Mendoza and his parents helped strengthen his resolve. So did some encouragement from family friend and trainer Kenneth Abraham.

“Don’t stop working to be a quarterback,” Abraham told Mendoza, adding that learning other positions would only help make him a better quarterback one day. “Nobody is giving you a chance, so you’ve got to make your own chance. You’ve got to work even harder and change the way people see you.”

The way Abraham remembers it, those conversations lit a fire under Mendoza. When their training sessions ended, the apple-cheeked fourth grader would beg to throw one more set of balls or do one more footwork drill.

“Man, the fire he had in his eyes,” Abraham said. “Even as a little kid, he wanted to get better.”

Mendoza gets his chance

Before long, Mendoza grew more comfortable with his Grey Ghosts teammates and became more accustomed to playing tackle football. He climbed the depth chart at quarterback while also turning himself into a wrecking ball at defensive end.

The chance Mendoza had been waiting for finally arrived midway through that season when the Grey Ghosts’ coaching staff became frustrated with Brown’s play at quarterback. Brown was having trouble remembering the play-calls from the sideline to the huddle, Zeigler said, leading to too many early timeouts or drive-killing delay-of-game penalties.

At halftime of one particularly dismal performance, Zeigler approached Ryals in the locker room and said, “We gotta make a change.” Zeigler recalled telling his players they needed a leader to step in at quarterback, someone who could help stabilize the offense and snap the Grey Ghosts out of their funk.

“I’ll do it, coach,” Zeigler remembers Mendoza saying.

Over the course of the rest of that season, Mendoza gradually earned more playing time and gained the trust of his coaches. At first, the bar was really low — “He could remember the plays from the sideline back to the huddle,” Zeigler said with a laugh. Then gradually the Grey Ghosts began seeing more and more glimpses of the version of Mendoza who captured the hearts of college football fans last season.

In one game, Mendoza held the ball too long and took a bone-rattling hit but popped right back up.

“Hey, this kid’s tough, man,” Ryals said to Zeigler on the sideline.

In another game, Mendoza delivered a dart to a receiver running a slant pattern over the middle.

“Did you see that? Ryals gushed to Zeigler. “He hit the kid coming out of his break in stride.”

Then came the naked quarterback bootleg that Ryals begged Zeigler not to call.

“Oh lord, Johnny, he’s not the fastest kid,” Ryals remembers saying.

“The play is wide open,” responded Zeigler. “Give him a shot.”

When Mendoza snapped the ball, he faked a handoff to get the defense flowing toward his running back. That afforded him just enough space to roll out to the opposite side of the field and scamper around the edge for a 20-plus-yard touchdown run.

The Grey Ghosts went 11-1 in Mendoza’s first year in the program, their only loss coming in the regional championship game. He returned the next year as the team’s unquestioned starter at quarterback, showcasing the same arm strength, command of the playbook, leadership and will to win that he is known for today.

“I learned to embrace my team,” Mendoza said during his Heisman speech, “and that is when I fell in love with football.”

The pathway to Tom Brady

The outcome of the Grey Ghosts’ quarterback competition ultimately worked out well for both combatants. Brown converted to wide receiver and blossomed into a feared deep threat, landing a scholarship offer from the University of Miami before he started high school and going on to play for LSU, Florida State and Arkansas.

Offers from top-tier colleges famously proved more elusive for Mendoza. The presumptive No. 1 overall pick in this week’s NFL Draft largely went under-recruited during high school.

After running the run-oriented Wing-T offense at Belen Jesuit as a ninth grader, Mendoza made the mature decision to leave a school he loved and transfer to a Christopher Columbus program that favored a pro-style attack. Mendoza started out as the fourth-string quarterback at Columbus but worked his way up the depth chart, becoming the starter as a junior and leading his team to a 9-0 record during a COVID-shortened season.

The travel restrictions on coaches during the pandemic impacted Mendoza’s recruitment. So did the fact that the University of Miami, Florida International and Florida Atlantic all passed on him. Ryals remembers sending Mendoza’s high school stats and highlight videos to a close friend on the Miami staff and urging him to take a look. The Miami assistant coach basically told Ryals that the Hurricanes weren’t interested. They already had secured a commitment from another quarterback in Mendoza’s class who they liked better.

Mendoza likely would have started his college career at Yale had quarterback Justin Martin not flipped from Cal to UCLA on signing day in 2021. That sent the Golden Bears scrambling to find a last-ditch replacement and led to offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave flying to Miami to work out Mendoza in person.

The rest of Mendoza’s story is the stuff of fairy tales.

At Cal, he went from two-star recruit to two-year starter.

At Indiana, he secured pretty much every attainable accolade.

Now he’s likely to join the Las Vegas Raiders, whose part owner is Mendoza’s longtime idol Brady.

The adversity that Mendoza endured during his first year playing tackle football with the Grey Ghosts no doubt helped prepare him for the obstacles that lay ahead.

“All those coaches who passed on him, they’re kicking themselves now,” Zeigler said.

Former Grey Ghosts assistant coach William Jacoby still has the team picture from one of Mendoza’s seasons with the program. He says he pulls it out from time to time to show the boys that he coaches.

“Who’s that?” he’ll ask, pointing to the floppy-haired kid in the second row wearing a No. 15 jersey.

When his players say they don’t know, Jacoby tells them, “That’s Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner.”

“If you work hard enough,” Jacoby concludes, “that could be you one day,”