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No Heisman poses needed for Fernando Mendoza. His clutch play will do just fine

Screenshot 2025-08-29 at 11.28.07 AMby: Chris Low11/08/25clowfb

There was no pose Saturday afternoon from Fernando Mendoza, only a drive and a throw they will remember for a long time in Bloomington, Indiana.

Something says the Heisman Trophy voters will too.

If winning college football’s most prestigious individual award is truly about delivering in big moments on big stages – and, granted, that’s been a bit of a moving target over the years – then Mendoza staked perhaps the most convincing claim yet this season in Indiana’s thrilling 27-24 win over Penn State.

The redshirt junior quarterback had been pedestrian, really not even pedestrian, until his team’s final drive and Beaver Stadium quaking with the Penn State fans thirsting at the thought of the first real glimpse of light during what’s been a dark and gloomy season in Happy Valley.

The No. 2 Hoosiers were in deep trouble, but Mendoza was there to dig them out of the kind of hole the great ones do. It’s become his calling card.

Penn State led 24-20 with 1:51 to play, and Indiana was without any timeouts. On first down, Mendoza was sacked back to Indiana’s own 13, but that only seemed to narrow his focus. He connected with four different receivers, who all contributed to the magic with magnificent catches, and the Hoosiers drove 80 yards in 10 plays with Mendoza hitting a leaping Omar Cooper Jr. in the back of the end zone on third-and-goal from the 7 with 36 seconds to play.

Mendoza finished with just 218 passing yards on the day, and 87 of those yards came on the final drive. The only thing better than his poise and precision on that final drive was Cooper’s incredible body control to somehow get his left toe down before being shoved out of bounds on the game-winning play.

Clearly, Mendoza has had better games this season. He hasn’t had a more impressive (or gutsier) drive, and he was playing without one of the top receivers in the country. Elijah Sarratt, who had 10 touchdown catches coming into the game, was sidelined with a hamstring injury.

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, clearly emotional after the game, referenced a rubber ball when talking about Mendoza and his steely resolve following Indiana’s 30-20 win over Oregon last month.

“You don’t want to be like a crystal chandelier where you drop it and it breaks into a million pieces,” Cignetti said. “You want to be like a rubber ball. It bounces right back in your hands.”

Just like the Oregon game last month and the Iowa game two weeks earlier, Mendoza bounced back from another fourth-quarter interception to lead Indiana to another major road win.

The 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to give Indiana the lead for good against Oregon only elevated Mendoza’s reputation as Captain Comeback, but he took that moniker to another level with the game-saving drive against Penn State after throwing an interception two possessions earlier, leading to a go-ahead touchdown by the Nittany Lions.

If Mendoza sweats, he doesn’t show it. Same for flinching or getting remotely nervous.

He just wins, and adding him this offseason via the transfer portal from Cal is a chief reason the Hoosiers keep winning. They’ve won at least 10 games each of the past two seasons after having never reached double figures in wins in school history.

Indiana also has never had a Heisman Trophy winner. Running back Anthony Thompson was runner-up in 1989.

And while there’s still plenty of football to be played, Mendoza is right there at the top of the race with the likes of Alabama’s Ty Simpson, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith, and Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed, among others.

Mendoza now has 2,324 passing yards and only five interceptions on the season and has accounted for 30 touchdowns (26 passing and four rushing). He’s also completing 71.3 percent of his passes.

His numbers are certainly Heisman-worthy, but the way he’s rallied his teammates and the way they’ve rallied around him after just one season on campus is as telling as anything.

Mendoza is a giver, and it goes back to his youth while growing up in Miami.

He coordinated the Christopher Columbus High School Turkey Drive with 436 turkeys provided to families in need in Miami-Dade County. He’s a founding member of “They Can Too,” a global organization dedicated to helping and spreading awareness for youth in need. He organized a Cuban relief service trip along with his grandfather, Alberto Espino, when they went to Cuba to give back to their native community, locals and family members. And while at Cal, he was one of the hosts of the 2024 Golden Buddies Football Clinic for youth with and without disabilities.

As the old saying goes, you win with people like Mendoza, and the Hoosiers are winning – big.