One player on the Las Vegas Raiders will be looking for another team this offseason.
With the start of the league year, the Raiders are planning to release wide receiver Hunter Renfrow.
The 2019 fifth-round pick from Clemson was a Pro Bowl player in 2021 but his production suddenly dropped as he went from catching 103 passes in 2021 and being a third-down sure thing to catching 36 passes in 2022 and just 25 in 2023.
He completely fell out of the offensive game plan of former coach Josh McDaniels, but not much changed once McDaniels was fired after Week 8 in 2023. Renfrow did not have a reception in the final four games of the season.
The team will get a salary-cap savings of $8.2 by cutting Renfrow, but they will also have $5.5 million in dead cap money by releasing Renfrow, who was going to have a $13.7 salary-cap hit this season.
The Raiders are also expected to cut quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Brian Hoyer and defensive tackle Jerry Tillery on Wednesday as the new NFL league year begins.
Renfrow will be a free agent and is still only 28.
The Las Vegas Raiders kicked off the start of the new league year by releasing quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and receiver Hunter Renfrow to give the new regime more room to operate under the salary cap.
The Raiders also released backup quarterback Brian Hoyer and defensive tackle Jerry Tillery on Wednesday, just minutes after the start of the 2024 league year.
The moves create significant salary cap space for the Raiders to use this offseason as general manager Tom Telesco and coach Antonio Pierce look to build the team into a contender.
These decisions had been widely expected, as the Raiders benched Garoppolo midway through last season after Pierce took over for fired coach Josh McDaniels and the other players were no longer part of the team’s long-term plans.
The Raiders had signed Garoppolo to a three-year, $72.75 million contract last offseason to take over as quarterback from recently released Derek Carr, but the move backfired almost from the start.
Garoppolo’s contract had to be reworked when he failed a physical and needed surgery on his previously injured foot, and he never played up to the level he had during his time in San Francisco after getting healthy.
Garoppolo made six starts for Las Vegas, throwing nine interceptions and only seven TDs before getting benched following the coaching change.
He then got suspended in February for the the first two games of next season for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs, allowing the Raiders to void the $11.25 million guaranteed salary Garoppolo was supposed to be owed in 2024.
Las Vegas will still take a $17.1 million dead cap hit but will save at least $11.3 million on this year’s cap.
