Fernando Mendoza vs. Dante Moore: NFL eyes, including Jets, are watching

A lot of factors go into sizing up quarterbacks for the NFL Draft. There are interviews and pro day workouts and medical checkups. Everything gets inspected, from the way the players treat the equipment staff to their middle school report cards.

“The quarterback evaluation is a full process, I think, start to finish,” Jets general manager Darren Mougey  said this week, “with obviously the games being the most important.”

Oh, right! The games!

Obviously.

Or in the case of the Jets and the other quarterback-needy teams with picks at or near the top of this spring’s selection process: One game.

Friday night’s Peach Bowl will showcase Indiana’s Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza and Oregon’s Dante Moore,  the two players who figure to be the top quarterbacks taken in April, and there is a very good chance one of them will wind up in a Jets uniform next season.

The Jets have the second overall pick; the Raiders, also expected to be looking for a quarterback, have the first.

Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy this season and has led Indiana to an undefeated season, is projected to go first by many analysts, but that can change. Moore hasn’t even declared for the draft yet and could return to college for another season, an option that likely would have more to do with sharpening his craft and earning significant NIL money while doing so than the queasy prospect of becoming a Jet. It’s a fun punchline to suggest that avoiding the franchise is a priority for him.

But Moore does have, well, more to gain than Mendoza from a big showing on Friday night. He could solidify himself as not just the second-best (potential) quarterback in the draft class but perhaps even start to overtake Mendoza and rise among the overall rankings to eliminate some of the positional inflation that lifts him so high in many mock drafts.

So who will wind up where?

“Well, there’s still several games to be played, and I think these games will be big and have an impact,” Mougey said of the order in which he expects they will be taken. “There will be some exciting games here still to watch at the end.”

There also was Thursday night’s Fiesta Bowl, the other CFP semifinal, between Ole Miss and Miami, plus the national championship game on Jan. 19 in Miami. And the addition of Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, who announced this week that he will enter the draft after his team lost to Indiana in the Rose Bowl.

The Peach Bowl, though, will impact the NFL more than any of the others. Perhaps more than any other college game this season. It will give scouts and executives an opportunity to watch the top two prospects go head-to-head, a rarity.

There have been plenty of other quarterbacks who have gone 1-2 in the draft. Just two years ago, they went 1-2-3, with Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye topping the class. Before them there was Bryce Young and CJ Stroud, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, and, yes — close your eyes on this one, Jets fans — Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson (with Trey Lance going third).

Rarely, though, do those players meet this late in their seasons with so much on the line and with the full attention of the NFL teams not participating in their own playoffs glaring down on them.

For the closest comp to this, you have to go back more than a decade to the 2015 CFP semifinal — the inaugural one — between Florida State’s Jameis Winston and Oregon’s Marcus Mariota. The two quarterbacks had a combined 686 passing yards and three touchdowns in the game and Mariota’s team won, 59-20 . . . but Winston was the first player taken in the ensuing draft.

The coaches did a good job of pumping up the talents of their quarterbacks in pregame news conferences this week.

“When you look at a quarterback, obviously he’s got to have throwing ability and be able to process, but the ability to extend plays, whether it’s with his legs or once he’s out of the pocket with his arm, his eyes downfield, I mean, that’s the key,” Indiana’s Curt Cignetti said of Mendoza. “A guy that cannot extend plays, you really become vulnerable . . . Boy, I can’t even count the number of times in big games this year where his legs have come through and extended drives.”

Oregon’s Dan Lanning said of Moore: “Dante’s been a really good decision-maker throughout the year, and that’ll be something that’s really important in this game.”

After it, too, when Moore chooses to either remain in college or turn pro.

“At the end of the day, when I started football at 4 years old, everybody’s goal is get into the National Football League,” Moore said. “Yeah, there’s going to be all these things going on. I’m human. I see it on social media. But I told myself that I shouldn’t be engaged with it, because if I do, I’m thinking about myself and I’m not thinking about the 10 other guys on the field with me. So I’ve got to make sure I give them my 100% love and attention, because without them I wouldn’t be in the situation I am now.”

That’s the kind of quote that NFL decision-makers love to hear.

Now it’s up to Mendoza and Moore to give them at least one more chance to see the things they love to see.

The Jets will be watching.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.