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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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 even after that, I wasn’t quite ready to tell you — only that my leg hadn’t healed all the way, which is why your mom had her limp. It wasn’t until five years ago, when I got Covid, that things started to go downhill in a way where there was no more hiding it. It was during football season, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel. And the thought of you wondering if I supported you any less, because suddenly I wasn’t at your games? I hated that. So that’s when I knew we had to sit you and your brother down.”
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She went on to recall, “how hard of a conversation it ended up being. ‘Your mom has this degenerative disease… and while we don’t know how it will progress, it’s going to start to affect us in a few ways. But it won’t affect us in the ways that matter. We’ll have each other, and love each other, and be there for each other. I promise.'”
Both of Mendoza’s parents grew up in Miami, Florida, as the children of Cuban refugees who fled communism after Fidel Castro rose to power in the country.
Mendoza’s father, Fernando Mendoza Sr., was a rower at Brown University and a 1987 Junior World Championships gold medalist.
But Mendoza’s father also played football when he was younger, and was teammates with Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal at Christopher Columbus High School during the 1980s. Mendoza would go on to defeat his father’s former teammate in this year’s CFP national championship game.
Meanwhile, his mother played tennis at the University of Miami.
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