Sep 29, 2025; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; New York Jets quarterback Justin Fields (7) takes the field to start the second half at Hard Rock Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rich Storry-Imagn Images

Congratulations if you're reading this article, because you officially threw more positive net yards today in an NFL regular-season football game than Justin Fields.

Yes, you read that right. While you might have been sleeping or barely waking up for the morning slate of football games, the New York Jets were in London continuing their stretch as the only winless team in the league versus the Denver Broncos. Fields, once a dynamic, sought-after prospect at Ohio State in his first few seasons in Chicago, looked to revive his career on the Jets, but spent a majority of Sunday entrenched in the dirt.

While his game will go down in the record books as an all-time dud, the brunt of the blame shouldn't go on his shoulders. The Jets, who are speed running their way to a 15th-straight season of missing out on the postseason, are a top-to-bottom masterclass on dysfunction, short-term thinking, and foundational walls made of paper.

Fields is not the answer, but that isn't an indictment on the quarterback. He was flung into a team on its umpteenth rebuild with a defensive-minded head coach leading the charge. He's unlikely to be a starting quarterback for a playoff team unless the offense and coaching staff build around his strengths, and no one has done that worse than the Jets over the past two decades.

As the New York Jets waltz their way to possibly the No. 1 pick of the 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, it's going to be months of speculation on which quarterback they should select on the big day. In an upcoming draft, several B+ prospects could become stars in the right environment.

However, without a generational, can't-miss conductor, the No. 1 selection turns from excitement to fear of making the wrong decision. When there are five or six quarterbacks all with their own distinctive pros and cons, the wrong trigger pull could mean another half-decade of doing mock drafts by November.

Jets fans, I urge you to consider who should succeed the franchise quarterback throne, a position that has felt vacant for what feels like centuries.

Fernando Mendoza of the Indiana Hoosiers.

On the surface or even watching his game tape, he will not blow you away like some other prospects you'll be searching up on YouTube. He doesn't throw bombs down the field on every drive or spin around in circles, dancing through uncoordinated meat of men before running for a touchdown. But when it comes to football acumen, surgical precision with intermediate throws, and control of the red zone like few kids in college before him, he's special.

Mendoza is a player who has worked his way up from the bottom, improving every year in college and transferring from California to Indiana to rise from a fringe draftee in 2025 to now a frontrunner to be a first-round pick in 2026. He can use his legs when he needs to, but doesn't have the happy feet of other young throwers who heavily rely on improvisation to mask their weaknesses. Mendoza runs when he needs to and commands the pocket with supreme presence.

In Saturday's game against the No. 3 Oregon Ducks on the road, Mendoza's usual back-shoulder pass to the sidelines was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Instead of crumbling and folding within himself, he shrugged, marched down the field like a general, and then threw the same back-shoulder pass with a little more velocity for a touchdown as a swarm of Ducks was about to eat him alive on the rush.

In 2026, the Jets, like the New York Giants this year with Jaxon Dart, need hope. Although Mendoza is somewhat reserved in personality and more proper on the field compared to Dart's cult of personality and wild nature, he is a player a franchise can build around for years to come. A bad year or two won't tear him down; in fact, like he did at California and now at Indiana, he's more likely to help build the rest of the team up alongside him.

Today, like many October days of the past, has been a bad day for the New York Jets. Come April in Pittsburgh, with their pick for the future hanging over them, I hope that day becomes one they'll remember centuries from now as the moment the Jets turned their franchise around.

This article originally appeared on Touchdown Wire: Justin Fields is not the answer for the New York Jets. It's time for Fernando Mendoza

Reporting by Tyler Erzberger, Touchdown Wire / Touchdown Wire

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