Hunter Renfrow remembers the point in time early in his NFL career, when he woke up and realized he needed to change things up – and if he didn’t, in his opinion, his career might have been short-lived.

That wake-up call came in the fifth game of his rookie season with the Raiders in 2019, when they played the Chicago Bears at Tottenham Stadium in London on Sunday, Oct. 6.

Renfrow was targeted five times in the contest but caught only one pass for 12 yards. Through the first five games of his rookie campaign, the 2019 fifth-round draft pick had accumulated a total of 12 receptions for 101 yards and no touchdowns.

It was a far cry from the production Renfrow had posted the year before at Clemson in 2018, when he caught 49 passes for 544 yards and a touchdown over 15 games to finish his career as a Tiger with 186 receptions for 2,133 yards and 15 touchdowns across 55 games.

“We played in London my rookie year, the fifth game of the year, and then we had the bye week the next (week),” Renfrow said recently during an interview with Darien Rencher on The Players Club Podcast. “And I had won the starting job, but I really wasn’t playing well. I think I had like six or seven targets. We were playing the Chicago Bears in London. I had like six or seven targets and like one catch. And at Clemson, if you threw to me, I wanted to catch the ball.”

Although Renfrow was starting at receiver for the Raiders, he wasn’t having the success he wanted and knew it was time to do things differently – his own way, and not necessarily exactly how former Raiders head coach Jon Gruden and the coaching staff were telling him to.

So Renfrow decided during the open date following the game in London that, that was exactly what he was going to do.

“I remember going back home that bye week, thinking like, ‘All right, this ain’t working. I’m going to have to do it my way,’” Renfrow recalled. “I know Coach Gruden wants me to run it like this, I know they want me to run it like this, but I’m going to be out of the league in about five games if I keep doing it like that. I’m terrible.”

From that point on, Renfrow started to see his numbers improve. And after missing three games late in the season due to injury, he finished his rookie season strong with back-to-back games scoring a touchdown and tallying 100-plus receiving yards. He racked up 13 catches for 209 yards and two scores over the final two games and completed his rookie campaign with 49 receptions for 605 yards and four touchdowns.

After catching 56 passes for 656 yards and two touchdowns in 2020, Renfrow had a career year in his third NFL season in 2021, breaking out with 103 catches for 1,038 yards and nine touchdowns on his way to earning his first career Pro Bowl selection.

If Renfrow hadn’t decided to take matters into his own hands early in his rookie season, the trajectory of his career might have been different.

“I didn’t want to look back and regret and say, ‘Oh, I was trying to please them so much and do it this certain way,’” Renfrow said. “And obviously, there were parameters, and I didn’t want to go against what they were saying too much. But I remember going home that bye week and sitting in the tree stand hunting a little bit, taking some time off and just thinking, ‘I’m not going to regret this. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to do it my way to an extent.’

“Obviously, there’s a coaching balance. I’m going to respect what they say, I’m going to do about how they say it, but I’m going to just put some tweaks here and there. So, that was kind of my moment where I kind of woke up and started playing some good football.”

–Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images 

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