The 2026 NFL Draft opens at 8:00 p.m. ET Thursday, April 23, in Pittsburgh — the city's first draft since 1948. [1] The Las Vegas Raiders hold the first overall pick and are expected to select Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who will not be in the building. He will be at home in Miami with his family and friends, as ESPN's Adam Schefter reported April 7 and the player himself confirmed on the Rich Eisen Show Monday. [2] Mendoza is the first projected No. 1 pick to skip the draft in person since the Jacksonville Jaguars selected Travon Walker in 2022.

The stated reason is family. Mendoza's mother, Elsa, has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair; the quarterback told Eisen the Miami celebration was "a lot easier for us, especially with the family situation." [3] That resonance — a day on which the paper also runs an obituary of Alan Osmond, who lived thirty-nine years with the same disease — is unplanned on the paper's end and emblematic on Mendoza's. He said he wanted to share the night "with everybody who poured into my football journey" rather than "10 or 12 people in Pittsburgh." [3]

The paper's Monday preview framed the forty-eight-hour window before kickoff as trade-liquidity season. Mel Kiper's April 19 mock 4.0 projected two first-round trades, one inside the top ten. Bill Barnwell's April 14 ESPN column named ten teams leaning toward a move. The Raiders' pick, then and now, is the settled datum. What is not settled is how much of the 2025 national-championship-winning Indiana roster — Mendoza completed 86.1 percent of his College Football Playoff passes against Alabama and Oregon — lands with him in Las Vegas by the weekend. Kirk Cousins is already in the building on a veteran contract. Head coach Klint Kubiak runs the NFL's highest rate of plays from under center since 2021. The rookie will be developed, not thrown in.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos