Kirk Cousins’ view on mentoring is different from Joe Montana and Brett Favre’s

Joe Montana wasn’t interested in teaching Steve Young when the two Hall of Fame quarterbacks played together in San Francisco. Brett Favre felt the same after Green Bay drafted Aaron Rodgers. Montana and Favre wanted to keep their starting jobs as long as they could.

Kirk Cousins has a different perspective on mentoring rookie Fernando Mendoza in Las Vegas. “On one hand, certainly happy to be a resource, and he’ll learn — we’ll all learn from each other so much in the quarterback room,” Cousins said on the AP’s “On Football” podcast. “I’ve always said that the quarterback room is kind of a working force together, where we’re all giving each other feedback, giving each other thoughts, asking questions, wanting to get a feel from the pulse of the room.

What should we do differently, or what are we doing well?’ So, there’s always good dialogue. You know, I’d hate to emphasize the mentoring thing too much in the sense that it makes it look like I know so much and he doesn’t, when I think, in reality, we all have something to share, we all can help one another, and that’s how the good quarterback rooms operate.” The Raiders drafted Mendoza No. 1 overall after the Heisman Trophy winner led Indiana to its first national championship.

Cousins knew the plan before he signed with Las Vegas in March, reuniting with new coach Klint Kubiak. The two were together in Minnesota when Kubiak was an assistant. “I think it helps to kind of hit the ground running and have a shared history,” Cousins said.

“I think any time you have continuity or shared history with coaches or players, it just helps you move faster and have built some trust. But, you know, in today’s NFL, that’s more of a luxury than a common thing. It seems like there’s just so much turnover and so much change that you have to kind of be able to hit the reset button every spring.

And so that’s part of it as well.” Cousins, who began his career with Washington in 2012, is on his third team in four years. He spent six years with the Vikings and the last two in Atlanta before going to Las Vegas. If the Raiders start slow or he struggles early, calls for the team to start Mendoza will be loud.