We don’t know if Fernando Mendoza will be starting at quarterback for the Raiders in Week 1 of the regular season, but we do know who the Raiders will be playing in the first overall pick’s potential debut.
The NFL’s schedule reveal on Thursday night shows that the Raiders will host the Dolphins at 4:25 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 13. The game will be on Fox.
Mendoza will have to get the nod over Kirk Cousins in order to start for the Raiders. Offseason addition Malik Willis is expected to make his first appearance for the Dolphins. Both teams will definitely have head coaches making their offseason debut as Las Vegas hired Klint Kubiak in February and Miami hired Jeff Hafley in January.
Sunday will also feature a pair of divisional games in the late afternoon window. The Packers will visit the Vikings while the Commanders will be in Philadelphia to renew their acquaintance with the Eagles. The NFC North matchup will be on CBS while the NFC East clash will be broadcast by Fox.
The other late game on Sunday afternoon will see the Cardinals visiting the Chargers on CBS. Arizona could have Jacoby Brissett, Gardner Minshew or rookie Carson Beck at quarterback for that contest.
The 1 p.m. ET games will send the Bills to Houston for a date with the Texans while the Browns go on the road against the Jaguars. The Colts will host the Ravens, the Saints will visit the Lions, the Buccaneers will travel to Cincinnati for Dexter Lawrence’s first game as a Bengal, and the Steelers will kick off the Mike McCarthy era — with or without Aaron Rodgers — at home against the Falcons.
Previous reports revealed that the Jets will be in Tennessee and that the Bears will head to Charlotte to face the Panthers. The Jets-Titans game will be on CBS along with the Bills-Texans, Ravens-Colts and Browns-Jaguars games. All the other 1 p.m. games will be on Fox.
The entire Week 1 slate will kick off on Wednesday, September 9 with a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl rematch in Seattle on NBC. Thursday will bring a Netflix game between the 49ers and Rams in the NFL’s first game in Melbourne and Sunday night will find the Cowboys at MetLife Stadium to meet the Giants on NBC’s Sunday Night Football. Those games were all announced ahead of Thursday’s full schedule reveal, which was also the case for the ESPN Monday night game between the Broncos and Chiefs in Kansas City.
Raiders Clips
Signs keep pointing to Egon Durban eventually becoming the majority owner of the Raiders.
Bloomberg reports that a group led by the Silver Lake executive will be acquiring another 25 percent of the team. The transaction will give Durban’s group nearly 40 percent of the team.
The NFL’s finance committee has already approved the deal. Per the report, owners will be taking up the issue at next week’s quarterly meeting.
Earlier this year, Durban acquired an option to buy controlling interest in the team, if/when Mark Davis decides to sell. At the time, an unnamed source insisted that Davis has “no intention” to sell. Later comments from Davis seemed to prop the door open to the possibility.
“I don’t have any children or a wife at this time,” Mark Davis told Paul Gutierrez of Raiders.com in April 2026, “and so it was prudent to put together a succession plan that would make sure that there were no issues, should something happen to me or should I decide. . . .”
Should I decide.
Should he decide, Durban would likely take over. And it’s believed by some that this would give minority owner Tom Brady even greater influence, if/when he ever decides to fully embrace his role with the team.
For now, Brady has kept his distance — even though Davis may have expected more involvement from Brady. At some point, Brady could decide to limit his various cash grabs and focus on taking the Raiders’ football operation by the eye patch.
Veteran defensive tackle Benito Jones has found a home for the 2026 season.
The Raiders announced that they have signed Jones on Wednesday. They waived defensive tackle Brodric Martin with an injury designation in a corresponding move.
Jones had 15 tackles and a sack in 14 games for the Dolphins last season. He entered the NFL with Miami as an undrafted free agent in 2020 and played 34 games for the Lions in 2022 and 2023 before returning to Miami for the last two seasons.
Jones has 83 tackles, 10 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks for his entire career.
Martin played in one game for the Steelers last year and was claimed off of waivers by Las Vegas in December.
Raiders quarterback Fernando Mendoza skipped Indiana’s visit to the White House on Monday. President Donald Trump made a point of mentioning Mendoza’s absence.
“The reason he’s not here — he was so nice, he called because he has actually . . . he’s a big fan of ours,” Trump said. “You wouldn’t believe it, because he didn’t show up. I’m not happy, but that’s OK. The reason he didn’t, because he’s at spring training, right? . . .
“And he’s at spring training, like his first day or something. I said, ‘You better go there.’ But he became Indiana’s first — otherwise, if he didn’t do that, believe me, I wouldn’t have even talked about him. I would have not. If he was not here for other reasons, like he didn’t like Trump or he didn’t want to come, I wouldn’t have even mentioned him. I’d go through the whole [speech] — I’d talk about how great [the team was], I wouldn’t even mention the quarterback’s name.”
It’s a well-known page from the Commander-in-Chief’s playbook. He likes those who like him. He dislikes those who dislike him — or who are perceived to disagree with his policies or his general approach to holding the highest office in the land and are willing to say so.
The attitude has created a culture of extreme sensitivity from sea to shining sea. Anyone who has a legitimate dispute is labeled a certain way, without regard to the merits of their position. To borrow a line from Trump, it’s “sad!” More accurately, it’s exhausting.
It also makes it impossible for people of reasonable minds to resolve their differences reasonably. Instead of addressing the merits, a person who doesn’t kiss the ring and/or toe the party line is labeled a certain way. Which allows the party articulating fair scrutiny to have their honest and authentic beliefs ignored, while the party with the power gravitates toward those who will say publicly whatever they need to say.
Regardless of whether they truly believe the things they say.
True beliefs no longer matter. To get along is to go along. To say all the right things, at all the right times. And if anyone steps out of line, they’re attacked and diminished and possibly threatened, subtly or otherwise.
Some will resist the bullying. Some won’t. In the end, we all have to find a way to sleep every night, and to be greeted every morning by the man or woman in the mirror.
The Raiders signed linebacker Cameron McGrone, the team announced Monday.
Las Vegas cut wide receiver Brenden Rice in a corresponding move.
McGrone, who turns 26 next month, played four games for the Colts and one for the Browns last season. In the five combined games, he played 43 defensive snaps and 68 on special teams and totaled two tackles.
The Patriots made him a fifth-round pick in 2021, but he never appeared in a regular-season game before he joined the Colts in December 2022. He played one game that season and has played in 27 games in his career.
Rice, the son of Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, signed a futures deal with the Raiders in January after spending time on their practice squad late last season.
The Chargers selected Rice in the seventh round of the 2024 draft, and he has also spent time with the Patriots and Seahawks.
Rice, 24, has appeared in three games, all with the Chargers and all in his rookie season.
The Bears confirmed their signing of wide receiver Scotty Miller on Monday and they also announced three other new additions to the roster.
Linebacker Jon Rhattigan is the most experienced member of that group. He joined Miller as a veteran tryout player at the team’s rookie minicamp over the weekend.
Rhattigan had six tackles on special teams in 12 games for the Raiders last season. He also played in one game for the Steelers and was a regular in the kicking game for the Panthers in 2024. He spent his first three seasons with the Seahawks and has 50 career tackles.
Wide receiver Kyron Hudson and linebacker Wayne Matthews also signed with the team. Both players went undrafted last month.
The only corresponding move saw the Bears place wide receiver Squirrel White on the reserve/retired list. White had signed with the team as an undrafted free agent ahead of the minicamp.
Offensive lineman Layden Robinson took part in the Falcons’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis and he is set to stick around Atlanta for a little while longer.
Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that the Falcons will be signing Robinson to their 90-man roster. There’s no word of any other roster moves at the moment.
Robinson was a 2024 fourth-round pick by the Patriots and he started 11 games at guard during his rookie season in New England. Robinson landed on injured reserve last summer, however, and he was waived during the season. The Raiders added him to their practice squad and signed him to a future contract before waiving him earlier this month.
The Falcons have Chris Lindstrom and Matthew Bergeron back as their starting guards, so Robinson will likely be competing for a reserve role over the rest of the offseason.
The 2025 season did not go well for quarterback Geno Smith.
But he is set for a fresh start with the Jets, coming back to the team that drafted him after a decade elsewhere in the league.
His new offensive coordinator, Frank Reich, is also back in the pros after his last coaching stint with the Panthers lasted just 12 weeks.
On Wednesday, Reich noted that Smith is a “perfect” fit for his offensive scheme.
“I’ve liked Geno from Day 1,” Reich said in his press conference, via transcript from the team. “When he was coming out of West Virginia, I had a high grade on Geno. I had not met Geno before here, and I’m kind of glad because I’m even more impressed with him, now meeting him in person. I feel his resilience, his toughness, I always think the No. 1 attribute in any quarterback that you need, especially if you want to come and turn something around, is you need someone who’s tough. I mean tough mentally, tough physically, and I feel that from Geno on every front.
“I think his experience, the ups and downs that he’s been through, and he’s had great success, and had to deal with some tough seasons, and if you play in this league long enough, everyone’s going to face that. And if you are the person, if you’re the right kind of leader, then you come out of it better, and I think that’s the version of Geno Smith we’re getting. We’re getting the best version of who he is, and I think his best football’s ahead of him.”
From 2021-2024, Smith started 52 games for Seattle, leading the club to a 28-24 record while completing 68.5 percent of his passes for 12,928 yards with 76 touchdowns and 36 interceptions. If Smith is better than that, then the Jets will be in a much better position to have success in 2026.
The biggest story in the opening days of the 2026 league year was the Ravens’ decision to pull out of a trade for Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby and the fallout from that move went beyond Baltimore and Las Vegas.
During an appearance on The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday, Buccaneers General Manager Jason Licht shed some light on how Tampa was impacted by the deal. The Bucs took edge rusher Rueben Bain with the 15th overall pick, but Licht thinks things would have played out differently had the trade gone through.
The Raiders would have landed the 14th pick and pass rusher would have been an obvious need for General Manager John Spytek in a post-Crosby world, but the pick remained in Baltimore. Spytek had also agreed to sign former Ravens center Tyler Linderbaum during the period when the trade was set to go through, which meant that the Ravens had an acute need on their offensive line at No. 14. They didn’t have as big a need for an edge rusher after signing Trey Hendrickson, so guard Vega Ioane became the choice.
“Then I think going back to free agency when, you know, the Raiders-Ravens trade didn’t work out, I think that in some way I’d like to think helped us a little bit. I was a little afraid if the Raiders made that trade, Spytek, he and I are very close, he was taunting me a little bit, hey, we’re sitting right in front of you, I know what you need,” Licht said “And then, you know, Crosby goes back to the Raiders, then the Ravens are sitting there again with their pick, and I know they love their edge rushers, too, so that had me nervous. They took Vega, which is an awesome pick, you know, they need offensive linemen. Maybe the fact that the Raiders signed Linderbaum helped us get Rueben. We’re all trying to help each other out here, especially the people that are good friends, so thanks, Spytek.”
Licht said the Bucs were in on Hendrickson “a little bit” before he agreed to terms with Baltimore, but the way everything came together left them with a “shiny new toy” at the top of the draft.
Another one of Fernando Mendoza’s Indiana teammates will be joining him with the Raiders.
The Raiders announced that they have signed wide receiver Jonathan Brady on Monday. They also signed running back Roman Hemby and wide receiver E.J. Williams Jr. as undrafted free agents last week, so there’s now a quartet of Hoosiers on the roster in Las Vegas.
Brady transferred to Indiana in 2025 after playing at New Mexico State and Cal. He caught 14 passes for 115 yards and three touchdowns in his lone season in Bloomington. He also averaged 16.5 yards on punt returns and returned one punt for a touchdown.
The Raiders placed wide receiver Justin Shorter on injured reserve in a corresponding move. He appeared in 17 games the last two seasons and saw most of his action on special teams.
