The Silver and Black are moving on from an offensive cog who has not lived up to his contract. They are set to release Hunter Renfrow, NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport reports.
Given a two-year, $32M deal during the 2022 offseason, Renfrow strangely fell out of favor while on that contract and the team explored trade possibilities last season. Renfrow was set to earn an $11.2M base salary next season.
The Raiders did not get much out of the Clemson alum following his 1,000-yard season — which played a central role in their Rich Bisaccia-overseen playoff berth — and they will save more than $8M with this release. Since his 1,038-yard 2021 slate, Renfrow has combined for just 585 yards over the past two seasons. This will go down as a notable mistake during the brief Josh McDaniels era, as Renfrow proved ill-fitting in the Raiders’ most recent offensive scheme despite McDaniels and Dave Ziegler signing off on the extension.
The Raiders shopped Renfrow at the 2023 deadline, doing so as Mark Davis became resigned to another staff overhaul. Prior to the McDaniels and Ziegler firings, they could not convince any team to take on Renfrow’s remaining base salary. Las Vegas did not want to eat any salary to move Renfrow last year. The team resumed its effort to trade the former Jon Gruden draftee this offseason, but nothing came to pass. Renfrow, 28, will join Tyler Boyd and Curtis Samuel among available slot receivers on the market.
Renfrow is an interesting candidate for a bounce-back deal, given his production under Gruden and down the stretch in 2021. The former fifth-round pick strung together back-to-back 600-plus-yard seasons in 2019 and ’20, becoming the Raiders’ top complement to Darren Waller in those years. With Waller sidelined for a chunk of the 2021 stretch run, Derek Carr turned to Renfrow as his top chain-mover. The Saints would profile as a potentially interested party, but Renfrow has not put much in the way of quality on tape over the past two seasons.
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