Jets’ CFP Recap: How did top 3 QB targets perform?

Thursday was the most important day for the New York Jets in months.

The team’s top three candidates to start at quarterback in Week 1 of the 2026 season—Dante Moore, Fernando Mendoza, and Ty Simpson—each graced the College Football Playoff stage.

How these quarterbacks performed on Thursday will go a long way in determining how the Jets, currently slotted at No. 3 in the draft order, will approach their pursuit of a franchise signal-caller in April.

So, how did these prospects perform?

Let’s dive in.

Tale of the Tape

Before jumping into their performances, it would be valuable to gain an understanding of where each prospect stood going into Thursday.

This table displays Mendoza, Moore, and Simpson’s rankings in various categories before Thursday’s games. It gives us an idea of Mendoza, Moore, and Simpson’s strengths and weaknesses as prospects, helping us pinpoint the areas where they needed to show the most improvement on the CFP stage.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the three prospects’ performances on Thursday.

Oregon QB Dante Moore

Moore completed 26 of 33 passes (78.8%) for 234 yards, no touchdowns, and an interception in Oregon’s 23-0 victory.

Despite the gaudy completion percentage, it was a very rough day for Moore and the Ducks’ offense as a whole. Moore pumped up his completion percentage through a plethora of designed screen passes, but he struggled to push the ball downfield, including a critical fourth-down play where he failed to see a wide-open post route for a likely touchdown. Moore also threw an interception on another fourth-down play.

The Ducks’ defense set up the offense with multiple short fields to facilitate second-half touchdowns, but the offense continuously came up small in big spots.

Performance in key developmental areas

On Thursday, we pinpointed Moore’s short passing as an area where he needed to show improvement to NFL scouts.

Entering the game, Moore ranked 33rd out of 100 FBS quarterbacks with just 6.8 yards per attempt on short passes (0-9 air yards), well behind his No. 8 placement in intermediate Y/A (11.6) and deep Y/A (18.3). Moore also had a mediocre 66.2 Pro Football Focus grade on short passes, largely due to his concerning ratio of four touchdowns to four interceptions.

How did he do?

Pretty good, actually. Despite his overall struggles, Moore was sharp in the short range, completing all 14 of his pass attempts for 112 yards (8.0 per attempt), no touchdowns, and no interceptions. He earned an 81.2 grade from PFF on short passes.

It was also promising to see Moore’s willingness to take what the defense gave him. He targeted the short area on 42.4% of his attempts, well above his previous season average of 35.7% (78th of 94 qualifiers), a mark so low that it would be less than any qualified NFL quarterback in 2025. The 42.4% mark is much closer to what Moore will likely be asked to do in the NFL.

The professional game has become increasingly reliant on short passes. Each year, teams become increasingly focused on raising completion percentages and lowering interception rates. The short pass is the bread-and-butter of every NFL scheme, so Moore needs to prove that he can hit those passes with tremendous consistency. He showed promise in this area on Thursday, even if he struggled in other areas of the game.

Moore completed just one of three deep passes against Texas Tech, a disappointing output for the quarterback who entered the game ranked first among all FBS passers in adjusted completion percentage on deep passes. Still, we already know that Moore can sling the rock downfield. It was more important for him to show that he can cook in the underneath area against a top-notch defense, and he did that.

It was far from a pretty outing for Moore, whose 68.2 overall PFF grade was his third-lowest of the season, but in some ways, it can be argued that he did more to improve his stock than lower it.

Alabama QB Ty Simpson

Simpson started for the Crimson Tide, but suffered what was later revealed to be a cracked rib while scrambling for a first down near the end of the first half. He came out to start the second half, but after a three-and-out, Simpson felt that he was in too much pain to continue, and he sat out the rest of the game.

Backup quarterback Austin Mack finished out a miserable 38-3 loss for Alabama.

When he was on the field, Simpson struggled to get anything going. He completed 12 of his 16 pass attempts (75%), but those only yielded 67 yards (4.2 per attempt). Simpson did not take any sacks, but he lost a fumble on the scramble play that resulted in his injury.

The fumble was a critical turning point. Alabama trailed just 10-0 at the time and was pushing into Indiana territory, but the turnover set up an Indiana touchdown to close the half, giving the Hoosiers a 17-0 lead.

Simpson’s lack of production was not entirely his fault, though.

Alabama’s receivers, a weakness on the roster (the Crimson Tide rank just 31st among 68 Power Four teams in PFF’s receiving grade), also struggled, finishing the game with a mediocre 58.6 receiving grade, the team’s fourth-worst mark of the year.

The pass protection was also problematic. Simpson was pressured on 31.6% of his dropbacks, a rate even higher than the troubling 30.7% mark he entered the game with, which already ranked just 56th out of 100 qualified FBS quarterbacks.

Performance in key developmental areas

We highlighted two key areas for Simpson going into Thursday’s game: deep passing and ball security.

Unfortunately for Simpson, he failed to impress in either area.

Simpson attempted just one deep pass, which fell incomplete. Even in the intermediate range, he completed only two passes (although he was 2-of-2 for 31 yards). Ten of Simpson’s 12 completions were under 10 air yards.

The lack of downfield production against Indiana’s elite defense perpetuates concerns about Simpson’s ceiling. His deep ball has been under scrutiny all year, and in the biggest game of the season, he couldn’t produce any big plays through the air. Whether that was his fault or not, it will amplify the noise from his critics, including both Twitter-fingered fans and professional scouts alike.

As for ball security, Simpson had a rough day. His fumble was a back-breaker for Alabama. While he avoided interceptions, he got away with a turnover-worthy throw. That’s two fumbles-plus-TWTs on just 19 dropbacks, an abysmal 10.5% rate. Given that Simpson entered the game with a 4.0% rate, already an unimpressive 33rd out of 100 qualifiers, this was not a good day for Simpson in the ball security department.

Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza

The Heisman Trophy winner was only asked to drop back 22 times, as Indiana coasted throughout the second half in its 38-3 win over Alabama. Still, Mendoza continued his storybook season with another uber-efficient outing.

Mendoza completed 14 of 16 passes for 192 yards (12.0 per attempt), three touchdowns, and no interceptions. He was sacked three times and added five rushes for 38 yards.

Overall, Mendoza earned a 96.7 QBR, his second-best of the season, and a 92.9 passing grade at PFF, the best of his career.

Performance in key developmental areas

From a production standpoint, there aren’t many holes to pinpoint in Mendoza’s game. The 22-year-old quarterback has worked in lockstep with head coach Curt Cignetti to produce one of the most efficient offenses in college football. Short, intermediate, deep—he’s crushed defenses at every level, and he’s kept the ball safe while doing it.

You have to dig a little deeper to find weaknesses that might be exposed in the NFL once Mendoza leaves Cignetti’s offensive paradise and steps into a hellscape like Florham Park.

One of those is his tendency to take sacks. Despite another dominant overall game, Mendoza struggled in this area against Alabama, continuing his recent downward trajectory.

Mendoza was sacked three times on just 22 dropbacks, a 13.6% rate. For perspective, his season average entering the game was 5.0%, which is already quite high for an NFL prospect, ranking 56th among 100 qualified FBS quarterbacks.

In fairness to Mendoza, he was pressured at a very high rate (40.9% of his dropbacks), which adds to the impressiveness of his overall efficiency. However, Mendoza’s lingering issue is that he allows too many of his pressured dropbacks to be converted into sacks.

Against Alabama, Mendoza took three sacks on nine pressured dropbacks, a 33.3% pressure-to-sack rate. It’s essentially double his previous season average of 16.7%, which ranked 57th out of 100 qualifiers.

Slowly and subtly, Mendoza’s most significant weakness is resurfacing after it seemingly disappeared.

During the 2024 season at California, Mendoza took 40 sacks, the second-most in college football. His offensive line was poor, but Mendoza made matters worse with his 25.8% pressure-to-sack rate, the ninth-worst mark among 98 qualifiers.

Early in the 2025 season, Mendoza was showing immense progress in this area. Nine games into his Hoosiers career, Mendoza had an outstanding pressure-to-sack rate of 10.4%, taking just seven sacks on 67 pressured dropbacks.

However, over his last five games (including the Alabama game), Mendoza has taken 14 sacks on 50 pressured dropbacks, a brutal 28% rate. That’s even worse than his 2024 mark at Cal.

Mendoza is an excellent prospect who continues to improve his stock, but his sack-proneness is a red flag that NFL teams will closely analyze in the coming months. It won’t be any easier to avoid sacks in the Raiders or Jets’ offense against AFC pass rushers like Myles Garrett and Nik Bonitto. The fact that he’s not avoiding sacks in Cignetti’s offense indicates that he requires immense improvement to avoid sacks at the NFL level.

It’s up to NFL teams to determine whether they believe Mendoza will achieve that improvement. Their answer to that question is arguably the most pivotal variable in determining how highly he is valued. If they believe he has a high chance of fixing it, Mendoza should be graded as a clear-cut No. 1 pick. If they don’t, he would still be a first-round-worthy prospect, but far from a slam-dunk.

Sacks are the bane of young NFL quarterbacks. Mendoza is cooking right now in a well-oiled offensive machine, rendering his sack numbers relatively meaningless, but if he doesn’t learn how to do his part in minimizing sacks, things might turn in an ugly direction once he is asked to carry a fledgling NFL franchise on his back.

Unfortunately, there is no tried-and-true solution to predicting Mendoza’s future development in particular areas of the sport. If there was, every pick in every draft would be nailed to the utmost precision. Scouts, and we paltry outsiders, will have to settle for our best guess based on the evidence at hand.

I don’t envy NFL scouts. Analyzing draft prospects is much more enjoyable when I can sit back and speculate from the cushy confines of my desk chair, where I won’t lose my job if I botch the evaluation—despite it being little more than a glorified guess.