Hunter Renfrow remembers the point in time early in his NFL career, when he woke upward and realized he needed to change things up – and if he didn't, in his stance, his career might accept 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. vi.

Renfrow was targeted five times in the contest just caught only one pass for 12 yards. Through the first five games of his rookie entrada, the 2019 5th-round typhoon pick had accumulated a total of 12 receptions for 101 yards and no touchdowns.

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

"We played in London my rookie year, the fifth game of the year, and so we had the bye week the next (week)," Renfrow said recently during an interview with Darien Rencher on The Players Guild Podcast. "And I had won the starting job, but I really wasn't playing well. I think I had like 6 or seven targets. Nosotros 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 ain fashion, and not necessarily exactly how sometime Raiders head omnibus Jon Gruden and the coaching staff were telling him to.

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

"I remember going dorsum dwelling that cheerio calendar week, thinking like, 'All correct, this own't working. I'g going to take to do it my fashion,'" Renfrow recalled. "I know Coach Gruden wants me to run information technology similar this, I know they want me to run information technology like this, only I'k going to exist out of the league in about five games if I keep doing it like that. I'thou terrible."

From that signal on, Renfrow started to see his numbers improve. And after missing three games tardily 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 upwardly thirteen 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 2 touchdowns in 2020, Renfrow had a career year in his tertiary NFL flavour in 2021, breaking out with 103 catches for 1,038 yards and ix touchdowns on his mode to earning his offset career Pro Basin selection.

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

"I didn't want to wait dorsum 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'g not going to regret this. I'chiliad going to go out in that location and I'm going to do it my way to an extent.'

"Obviously, there'south a coaching rest. I'one thousand going to respect what they say, I'k going to do about how they say it, but I'thou going to just put some tweaks here and there. So, that was kind of my moment where I kind of woke upward and started playing some practiced football."

–Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

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