Indiana football preseason scrimmage takeaways by coach Curt Cignetti
Indiana football has built a one-two punch at wide receiver, and coach Curt Cignetti elaborated on other takeaways. IndyStar IU insider Zach Osterman details.
He’s almost eight months removed from the unthinkable championship run at Indiana, and the sobering reality the Hoosiers didn’t want him anymore.
That’s right, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti — the best developer of quarterbacks in the game — decided he wanted someone else, and cherry-picked from the transfer portal to start over in Bloomington.
Josh Hoover in, Alberto Mendoza out.
No second act of Mendoza at Indiana, no unavoidable comparisons with Heisman Trophy-winning brother, Fernando. Just another backup quarterback searching for a new home.
And maybe, just maybe, finding the perfect fit at Georgia Tech.
“There’s a lot more on the quarterback’s plate here than there was at Indiana,” Alberto Mendoza says, and we can already collectively see Cig’s head explode at the very thought of that statement.
But hear Alberto out. This isn’t just some flippant statement from a bitter former player who has admitted over and over he loved his time at Indiana, and loved the coaches.
There are hard facts to back it up. Let’s let Chris Weinke, Georgia Tech’s quarterbacks coach and a former Heisman winner at Florida State, explain it.
“Typically in college football, you probably have 3-5 personnel groupings. We’ll have 12-13,” Weinke said. “You typically have 6-8 formations, and we’ll have 20-25. In a typical college offense, you’ll probably have 80-100 plays. We’ll have at least 250. I would say it’s more volume than anyone in the country.”
Someone has to manage all of that, and have at least 50 specific check plays memorized for each game to make sure the offense is in the right play when it reaches the line of scrimmage and the quarterback gets his pre-snap read. In a matter of 40 seconds every single play, depending on tempo.
Or as new Georgia Tech offensive coordinator George Godsey says, “Our quarterbacks have to have a foundational understanding of how we operate.”
We don’t know if Alberto can play at the same level as Fernando, and frankly, Cignetti clearly didn’t think so. But there is one undeniable family trait: preparation.
Georgia Tech coach Brent Key says Mendoza is a “high-level thinker.” He has command of the offense, has questions and wants answers.
It’s not simply regurgitating what he’s been told. He wants to know why, and then what happens if X or Y occurs. He wants answers to the test before he takes it.
“I’m a perfectionist,”Mendoza said. “I always want to learn more.”
While knowledge is one thing, execution is a completely different beast. And that brings us to the most critical factor in the evolution of Alberto Mendoza: He hasn’t started a game since he was a low-level high school recruit at Miami Columbus — despite leading his team to back-to-back state titles in 2022-23.
It’s all in his head, the two years with Cignetti and the eight months with Godsey — who spent 14 seasons in the NFL, and worked with some of the league’s elite quarterbacks — and the slap in the face that it’s all real in two weeks when Colorado arrives in Atlanta for the season opener.
New team, new expectations. Plenty of motivation.
Indiana and Mendoza can wish each other well (and they have), but you better believe Mendoza has something to prove. It’s probably best he’s traveling his own path, free of comparisons to his brother.
It’s also best Indiana isn’t trying to recreate its remarkable run in 2025, when Fernando Mendoza did just about everything right — and left nothing to build on. There’s only one way to go in Bloomington for Hoover, a road that potentially is full of noise, confusion and unfair comparisons.
When Mendoza arrived at Georgia Tech, Weinke told him they work on one foundational principle: Don’t complain, don’t explain, find solutions.
Which fits perfectly with the new story of Alberto Mendoza. He looks and sounds like his brother, that staccato delivery relaying the right words at the right time for the right moment.
They still talk weekly, and now compare notes on the NFL systems both run. And in the least surprising of revelations, Alberto admitted he and Fernando frequently talk about concepts and situational execution — and how they’d attack the defense.
You know, like typical brothers do.
“I’m trying to be the best version of me I can be,” Alberto said.
Just another former backup trying to find his way.
And remake his family name in the process.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.