Josh Hoover And The Weight Of Escaping Fernando Mendoza’s Shadow At Indiana

The question itself wasn’t directly about any public criticism Josh Hoover has faced this season. After Indiana’s 38-0 rout of Western Kentucky over the weekend, the Hoosiers’ starting quarterback rattled off the throws he felt he had missed, and a reporter wondered if having a quarterback who is willing to take ownership and acknowledge his mistakes makes a coach’s job easier. That’s when Curt Cignetti stepped in to defend him. "I think there is too much scrutiny of Josh Hoover right now," Cignetti told reporters this week during a press conference. "Unfair scrutiny." Cignetti was likely responding to some of the social media reaction surrounding his quarterback. No matter how good a team is — and Indiana is 3-0, having outscored its first three opponents 145-16 — there will always be fans and pundits nitpicking, comparing and looking for ways a team should be better. That’s the nature of sports. Win a national championship, and the future standards can become too high to meet. "Three years ago, nobody knew who Indiana's quarterback was," former Indiana coach and current Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo told me. "Now, not only do they know, they're an expert about him." Hoover transferred to Indiana from TCU in the offseason as one of the most coveted quarterbacks in the transfer portal. He presumably knew what he was getting into when he signed up to replace Fernando Mendoza, who had just led Indiana to its first national championship, won the Heisman Trophy and was selected No. 1 overall in the NFL Draft. It’s incredibly rare for the next man up to replicate everything his predecessor accomplished. Oklahoma came close under then-coach Lincoln Riley, when Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray won back-to-back Heisman Trophies, and Jalen Hurts followed with a Heisman finalist finish. But that kind of succession is the exception, not the rule. "I'd be surprised if Josh came there thinking that because Fernando won the Heisman, 'That's my next step,'" DiNardo said. "I think we're too realistic to think that." Cignetti’s willingness to push back on expectations and defend Hoover, though, stands out. His comments hit the news cycle quickly, and this became somewhat of a viral moment entering the fourth week of the season. "I always like to see when a coach comes to the defense of his players, because quarterbacks obviously deal with way too much credit and way too much blame," Garrett Gilbert — who was supposed to be the next great quarterback at Texas following Vince Young and Colt McCoy — told me. "It was difficult for me during my time at Texas, not just being the guy who came after Colt, but just expectation in general is tough for a young kid to deal with." As a freshman, Gilbert was famously thrust into the 2009 national championship game between Texas and Alabama after McCoy was injured on the fifth play. A former five-star recruit and the No. 1 quarterback prospect in Texas, Gilbert had appeared in 10 games that season. But stepping into that moment was an impossible task, and it turned into a long night for the Longhorns. Gilbert was named the starter the following season as a sophomore, but after struggling to win games, he eventually transferred to SMU, where he finished his college career before becoming a sixth-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. Gilbert was 19 when he followed McCoy, a Heisman finalist and Texas legend. Hoover is 23 and has years of starting experience as he leads Indiana into the post-Mendoza era — that’s the reality of college football in the transfer-portal era. But Hoover’s age and track record don’t necessarily make taking over for Mendoza any less daunting. Gilbert struggled with the attention. He read the local newspaper and said he checked ESPN after good games and bad ones to see what people were saying about him. He joked that, back then, Instagram was simply a place to look at pictures your friends posted. Now, it’s a meme-driven culture that can be unforgiving to anyone — let alone a college quarterback whose every mistake becomes public fodder. "I can’t imagine being a kid in today’s day and age and seeing and dealing with that stuff," Gilbert said. When it comes to blocking out the noise, Gilbert will never forget a conversation he had with former SMU coach June Jones early in the 2012 season. It was Gilbert’s fourth game with the Mustangs, and he had thrown five interceptions in a 24-16 loss to TCU. The next day at practice, after the team finished wind sprints, Jones pulled Gilbert aside on the field. "I was thinking, ‘Oh, here we go again,’" Gilbert said. "But June said, ‘This is your team. You could throw 100 interceptions, and it’s still going to be your team. You’re our guy. So let it go and go play.’ "That was a very freeing moment for me that maybe I hadn’t experienced. Not that I didn’t feel like it was my team at Texas when I was the starting quarterback, but I think I put a lot of pressure on myself. And June said that to me, and this is 14 years ago now, and I’ll never forget it. And from that point on, I played well because he had given me the confidence." Hoover’s situation isn’t the same, of course. He has completed more than 72% of his passes, thrown 10 touchdowns without an interception, and he has the second-best passer efficiency rating in the country. He faced backlash before the season even began after his former TCU coach, Sonny Dykes, publicly highlighted Hoover’s previous turnover rate. Cignetti came to Hoover’s defense then, noting that when Hoover arrived at Indiana, he met "his two new best friends: great defense and a really good run game." "I think maybe there’s a chance that’s what happens behind closed doors every day at Indiana," Gilbert said of Cignetti instilling belief in his players. "He’s a fiery individual, but it’s clear to me that he has his players’ backs whenever it matters." Cignetti said he saw Hoover miss just one throw on the tape from Indiana’s game against Western Kentucky because "we did a bad job picking up the blitz at running back, and he had a guy in his face." Other miscues were partly due to bad route running, and Cignetti said they had to hash some of that out as a staff. He concluded with: "I’m glad he’s our quarterback." After the 2024 season, Mendoza didn’t arrive at Indiana from Cal as a superstar — but developed into one. During the Hoosiers’ historic 2025 run, he threw 41 touchdowns with six interceptions and had five games in which he threw more touchdowns than incompletions, including two College Football Playoff games. "He had his Heisman moment against Penn State, but before that, he was just a guy," DiNardo said, referencing Mendoza's memorable game-winning drive to keep the Hoosiers' undefeated season intact. "I was there for camp, and he was great — a nice kid, a good interview and all that. But nobody was talking about him winning the Heisman Trophy. I mean, it’s insane." Expecting Hoover to be Mendoza 2.0 is unreasonable. But he can still accomplish great things and win a lot of games. "I think the answer is probably as simple as be yourself," Gilbert said when asked what kind of advice he might give Hoover or another player in a similar position. "Fernando is a perfect example of that. He became this lovable guy that his entire team respected and had so much success. And I think the reason he’s been able to do that is by being himself. "You go back to before me, Colt was stepping in, and how could he possibly be Vince Young? The answer is, he can’t. Being yourself and trusting what got you to that point can make such a big difference."