Fernando Mendoza embraces wheelchair-bound mom after Raiders select him No 1 overall

Leigh Steinberg, who has represented the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft a record eight times, gives his analysis on projected first pick Fernando Mendoza.

Fernando Mendoza shared the moment of being selected first overall in the NFL Draft with his family from home on Thursday night.

He was seen hugging his family, including his mother Elsa Mendoza, in a moment of celebration.

Despite being projected to be the first overall pick, Mendoza skipped the in-person draft in Pittsburgh to stay in Florida with his mother, who battles multiple sclerosis (MS) and is bound to a wheelchair.

Mendoza told reporters after he was drafted that he decided not to go to Pittsburgh to make it easier for his mother to travel to Las Vegas tomorrow when he visits his team. 

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Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza gestures after the CFP National Championship game against the Miami Hurricanes at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., on Jan. 19, 2026. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)

When Mendoza was only about 4 years old, his mother was diagnosed with the disease. It is a chronic, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that can affect the brain and spinal cord. She has spent the last few years in a wheelchair.

Elsa Mendoza wrote about the experience in a 2015 letter to her sons that was published in The Players Tribune.

"I was diagnosed about 18 years ago, but of course you never knew that. You and Alberto were so young, and I was doing fine… and mostly I didn’t want you to worry. It just felt like this impossible thing to place on you guys. On my sweet boys. And then I kept doing fine until about 10 years ago, when we went skiing and I broke my ankle and knee," she wrote.

"But