Fernando Mendoza has climbed every mountain, and brought Indiana football with him
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BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football fans got their Gus Johnson moment Saturday, when Fox’s famous play-by-play announcer delivered his breathless call of Fernando Mendoza’s game-winning touchdown pass to Omar Cooper Jr.
It contained all the hallmarks of a great Johnson call — the unfiltered response, dripping with emotion, attached forever to a moment in time. Even the inevitable cheap-seats criticism of Johnson’s exhortation to “give him the Heisman Trophy now,” referring to Mendoza, won’t devalue the moment for fans of a program eager to make many more of these memories.
Johnson’s declaration, heat-of-the-moment as it was, touched at a developing reality, as Indiana’s season matures toward its eventual end.
The Fernando Mendoza Johnson declared should win college football’s top individual prize Saturday is the reason — if you believe in Indiana — to buy the Hoosiers come December.
Whatever his flaws, Mendoza has an established track record now as the best late-game quarterback at the top of college football. If he delivers that kind of success down to down, he takes his team to its championship level.
“He can handle,” IU coach Curt Cignetti said, “about anything.”
That answer came in response to a tongue-in-cheek question about how Mendoza is handling the oncoming Midwest winter. It’s been unseasonably cold and snowy in Bloomington since the weekend, probably not too familiar to a Miami native who spent three years on the San Francisco Bay.
Cignetti deadpanned that Indiana would “get him a winter jacket,” but the core of his coach’s answer about Mendoza did not feel like joking.
Overlooked in high school, Mendoza spent a redshirt year and then two seasons — the bulk of them as the starter — on the West Coast proving coaching staffs wrong back East.
Miami Columbus coach Dave Dunn told IndyStar earlier this year he’s been tempted to call some of those coaches he once begged to take a chance on his (then) 6-foot-5, 208-pound quarterback, and ask them what they think of Mendoza now.
“I have not done that, and I will not do that,” Dunn told IndyStar, “but I want to do that.”
Dunn doesn’t need to make those calls. His former quarterback is delivering the message loud and clear.
Starting behind center for the No. 2 team in the country, Mendoza enters the final weeks of the regular season a frontrunner for the Heisman.
He’s second nationally in passer rating, per CFBStats.com, as well as tied for first in passing touchdowns (26). Mendoza’s 31 total touchdowns lead the Power Four.
Advanced metrics don’t dampen the hype — he’s top 10 nationally in both raw expected points added, and also EPA per touch, per CFB-Graphs.com.
And his coach promises there’s more to come.
“As much as he has improved, he can still improve more,” Cignetti said. “He’s probably taken his biggest step in the pocket in terms of staying calm, going through his progressions, his footwork. There’s still times when you can see that he needs to clean some things up in the pocket.”
It’s fair in any Heisman conversation to point out Mendoza’s rivals, particularly Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, who has been more efficient this fall. Sayin’s EPA numbers are better, he’s averaging slightly more yards per attempt and he’s the one quarterback in the country with a better passer rating.
Which is why that conversation has evolved across the last three weeks to begin casting the Big Ten championship as something of a kingmaker. With the Hoosiers and Buckeyes on pace to meet Dec. 6 in Indianapolis — and Heisman votes due two days later — this year’s conference title game could prove pivotal.
Moments like Saturday, held as evidence Indiana is not quite so dominant as Ohio State, might also be what separates Mendoza from Sayin in the end. Johnson’s call to voters reflected not just raw performance, but what Mendoza delivers when it matters most.
Saturday marked the third game-winning fourth-quarter drive Mendoza has presided over this season, all of them on the road in stadiums traditionally considered among the Big Ten’s most difficult for visiting teams.
There was the four-play drive that ended with Elijah Sarratt’s long catch and run at Iowa. Mendoza’s response to his own pick-six (5 of 7, 62 yards, TD) at Oregon. And then Saturday’s masterful two-minute drill to rescue a win at struggling Penn State.
Across those three drives combined, Mendoza is 12 of 20 for 215 yards and three touchdowns. That’s a passer rating of 199.8, more than 20 points higher than Mendoza’s season-long rating. Subtract an intentional spike to stop the clock in the Penn State sequence, and that number rises to 210.32.
Sayin should not necessarily be punished for Ohio State’s dominance against an admittedly more modest schedule. But likewise Mendoza’s resume shouldn’t be watered down by ignorance of what he’s looked like when games have been on the line.
On the same Saturday that Ohio State coach Ryan Day quietly celebrated the chance to finally run a legitimate two-minute drive, near the end of the first half at Purdue, Cignetti watched Mendoza deliver in the clutch like the quarterback NFL scouts believe might be first off the board in next spring’s draft.
“It was like, here we go, 90 yards with the boys,” Mendoza said, hearkening back to one of his viral moments at Cal. “These are the game-winning drives you dream of growing up as a kid.”
They’re also the moments that tease what Mendoza might be capable of come College Football Playoff time.
The Hoosiers stayed steady at No. 2 in this week’s CFP top 25, wedged between Ohio State and Texas A&M. Just as sportsbooks consider Mendoza a Heisman favorite, they rate his team a national title contender.
It’s simplistic to say Mendoza’s fortunes are intertwined with those of his team. Of course they are. That’s the fundamental nature of the quarterback position.
What’s more accurate is to say that this Mendoza — the one shorn of the nervous feet and “bad habits” developed at Cal — might be the biggest game changer in America. That when he flips the switch that turns on his absolute best, he becomes the best quarterback in college football, with all that follows after that.
“Fernando never ceases to amaze me,” Cignetti said. “All the stuff you see, the quick release, the arm, the mobility. He’s a great person. He really prepares. He’s really smart, and he’s developed quite a bit since he’s been here. …
“He’s climbed some tall mountains.”
The tallest now break the horizon line. Belief in Indiana is belief in Fernando Mendoza. Belief in Fernando Mendoza is belief that there is no mountain too steep for him anymore.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fernando Mendoza Heisman moments, clutch drives, lead Indiana football
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