Fernando Mendoza will make his first career start on Sunday, giving the Raiders a new quarterback at a moment when the 2026 season is headed toward another milestone for turnover under center. His debut is part of a trio of firsts on the same day, with Carson Beck and Kyle McCord also set to make their debuts.
The numbers give the move its weight. Mendoza, Beck and McCord would become the 48th, 49th and 50th different quarterbacks to start games in the 2026 season, and that would leave the first 10 weeks of the year in rare territory. It would be only the second time in the last 15 years, excluding the 1987 strike season, that 50 quarterbacks have started by this point. If another quarterback makes a first start on Sunday, the season would move to the second-most starters through 10 weeks since 1950, behind only 1999, when 55 different quarterbacks started games in the first 10 weeks.
For the Raiders, the change to Mendoza did not grow out of the injury carousel that has driven most of the quarterback movement this season. It came after Kirk Cousins was traded to the Vikings, a shift that altered the Raiders' path at the position and left Mendoza to take the next snap as a starter.
That is what makes Sunday different from a typical depth-chart shuffle. The broader league picture is already startling, but Mendoza's start turns it into something more concrete for the Raiders: a first career start, on a day when the season could cross from an unusual number into a historic one. The next question is not whether the turnover has been real. It is whether Sunday produces 50 starters, and whether Mendoza begins his career in the middle of a record-level stretch of quarterback instability.
