“My Mom Is My Why”

Fernando Mendoza, the No. 1 NFL Draft Pick, Chose Family Over the Spotlight — and Then Pledged $500,000 to Fight Multiple Sclerosis

By Paola Larrabure, Pharma Content Manager | Medically reviewed by Julia Kravtsova, PharmD, Head Patient Navigator

1. The Night the Cameras Stayed Home

On the night of April 23, 2026, the NFL Draft was underway in Pittsburgh. A record 320,000 fans filled the downtown. Commissioner Roger Goodell walked to the podium and announced that the Las Vegas Raiders had selected Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza with the first overall pick.

The cameras did not cut to a stage. They cut to a living room in Florida.

Mendoza had made the choice weeks earlier not to attend the draft in person. He wanted to be home with his family — specifically with his mother, Elsa, who lives with multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair, and for whom long-distance travel has become difficult. When his name was called, he hugged his father. He hugged his brother, Alberto. And then he knelt down next to his mother and wrapped his arms around her.

It was a quiet, powerful moment on a night built for spectacle. And for anyone who had been paying attention to Fernando Mendoza’s story, it was entirely in character.

2. “My First Teammate” — The Boston Years

In a letter she wrote to Fernando in December 2025, published by The Players’ Tribune just days before the Heisman Trophy ceremony, Elsa Mendoza described the bond that formed between her and her oldest son from the very beginning.

Elsa had grown up in Miami. She moved to Boston at age 25 — newly married, pregnant, and far from home. Fernando was born there. His father worked long hours, which meant that for months it was mostly just Elsa and her baby, navigating a freezing New England winter neither of them had been prepared for. She overdressed him in layers of coats and scarves until the pediatrician gently told her to knock it off.

In her letter, she described those early days as feeling less like parent and child and more like two people getting through something new together. She called him her “buddy.” She called him her “first teammate.”

Eventually the family moved back to Miami, where both Elsa and her husband had grown up as the children of Cuban refugees. Elsa had played tennis at the University of Miami. Her husband — also named Fernando — had rowed at Brown University, won a gold medal at the 1987 Junior World Championships, and played high school football at Christopher Columbus High School alongside a young Mario Cristobal, now the head coach at Miami.

One Boston habit stuck with young Fernando long after the family moved south: his loyalty to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. He wanted to play quarterback because of Brady. His mother, selfishly hoping to raise a tennis player, taught him to “step and throw” the way she’d been coached at UM. Every quarterback coach he’s had since has gently teased her about it.

3. The Diagnosis Elsa Kept Quiet for Years

When Fernando was about four years old, Elsa was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She did not tell him. She did not tell his younger brother, Alberto.

In her letter, she explained why: her sons were so young, and she was doing well enough that the disease felt like too heavy a thing to place on them. She wanted to protect their childhood. So she carried it privately.

For about a decade, she managed to. Then came a skiing accident that left her with a broken ankle and knee that never fully healed. That was the moment the world — and her boys — started to notice her limp. She told them the injury had not healed properly. She still did not tell them the rest.

Five years later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disease accelerated. Traveling became harder. Elsa realized she would not be able to make it to Fernando’s high school football games the way she always had. The thought of her son standing on the field wondering whether she had stopped caring — that was the part she could not live with.

So she and her husband sat the boys down and told them the truth. She described the conversation in her letter as one of the hardest of her life. Her message to her sons that day was simple: the disease would change their family in some ways, but it would not change the things that mattered. They would love each other. They would show up for each other. She promised them that.

She also described something that surprised her as the disease progressed: the hardest part, in some ways, was not the physical changes. It was the embarrassment. The crutch. The chemo. The way roles started to shift. The way she sometimes caught herself thinking, I’m your mom — you’re not supposed to be my responsibility, I’m supposed to be yours.

In her letter, she told Fernando that he is the reason that embarrassment never took hold. Because he never once treated her differently. He gave her full debriefs of his college visits with pictures included. He called her before every game she couldn’t make it to. He joked, when he had to carry her up stairs, about whether she had put on weight. He kept looking at her exactly the way he had always looked at her. He never flinched.

4. From QB4 in Park Football to Heisman Winner

Fernando’s path to the NFL was, by his mother’s telling, a long chain of moments where he knew who he was and what he wanted — and was willing to be patient until the world caught up.

He started as the fourth-string quarterback in a local park football league. His coaches told him so on day one. He told them that was fine, and got to work. He eventually earned snaps, and when he did, he played well.

In ninth grade, he loved his school, but the football team ran a Wing-T offense — not a system that would help him develop as a passer. After the season, he went to his parents and explained that if he wanted to play college football, he needed to switch to a school with a pro-style offense. He did. It cost him friendships. Some classmates called him a traitor. His mother watched it break his heart. He did it anyway.

When COVID shut down his high school’s chance at a state championship, his recruiting stalled. He was rated as a two-star prospect. No Power Five programs were offering scholarships. So he went to seventeen camps in a single summer. His mother became his hype woman. He told her he was going to get a Power Five offer. She told her son she knew he would. Eventually, he did.

He played college football at Cal, where he earned his degree. Then, after talking with his brother Alberto — who was playing at Indiana — Fernando transferred to Bloomington for his final college year to play for head coach Curt Cignetti. In that one season, he threw his way into the Heisman conversation, led Indiana to the Big Ten title, and then beat Miami 27–21 in the College Football Playoff National Championship at Hard Rock Stadium in January 2026. In a small piece of Mendoza family symmetry, the losing head coach that night was Mario Cristobal — his father’s old high school teammate.

He won the Heisman Trophy. Three and a half months later, the Raiders made him the first overall pick of the draft.

5. The Journey at a Glance

A quick look at how Fernando and Elsa Mendoza’s parallel stories have unfolded over the past two decades:

6. “My Mom Is My Why” — The Mendoza Family Fund

Hours before the draft began on the evening of April 23, Fernando Mendoza released a video of his own. In it, he announced the launch of the Mendoza Family Fund, a new initiative established in partnership with the National MS Society to support multiple sclerosis research.

He opened the announcement with a founding donation of $500,000. He pledged to raise over $1 million over the next three years.

“My mom is my light; she is my why,” he said in the video. “Together, I believe we can end this disease.”

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Dr. Tim Coetzee, president and CEO of the National MS Society, called the fund an opportunity to channel Fernando’s momentum into critical research and programs that could change lives and ultimately help end MS.

The timing was deliberate. By announcing the fund on the morning of the draft, Fernando ensured that the biggest day of his career doubled as the loudest possible platform for his mother’s cause — and for every family navigating MS in quieter corners of the country.

7. What Love Looks Like From the Sidelines

For years, Elsa Mendoza sat in bleachers and hospital waiting rooms, at home in Miami and on the sidelines of her sons’ games, carrying something most people in the stands could not see. When her sons finally learned what she had been holding, she worried that she would become their burden. Fernando made sure she never did.

What unfolded on April 23, 2026, was not just an athlete being drafted. It was a son telling his mother, in front of the entire country, that she had never been in his way. That she had always been the reason.

There are millions of families right now navigating a diagnosis like Elsa’s — quietly, privately, without cameras. The Mendoza Family Fund was not created just to support research, although it will. It was created to make sure those families feel seen. To tell them that the love they pour into someone they care for is not invisible. That it counts. That it matters.

Fernando Mendoza will have a long career ahead of him. There will be statistics and contracts and losses and wins. But the story he told on draft night — without saying a word — is one worth holding onto. Love shows up. Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s heavy. Even when the cameras are looking somewhere else.

To learn more about multiple sclerosis research and resources, visit the National MS Society.

References

1. Mendoza, E. (2025, December 11). Dear Fernando. The Players’ Tribune.
2. Williams, C. (2026, April 23). Fernando Mendoza launches foundation to support multiple sclerosis research. NBC Sports / Pro Football Talk.
3. Thompson, J. (2026, April 23). Fernando Mendoza embraces wheelchair-bound mom after Raiders select him No 1 overall. Fox News Digital.
4. Yahoo Sports. (2026, April 23). 2026 NFL Draft first-round results and grades.
5. National MS Society. About MS.