The 29-year-old Renfrow knows plenty about trials and tribulations, having missed an entire NFL season and not playing up to his own standard for the two before that because of what he eventually came to learn was ulcerative colitis.
So the route-running and the hands, those things never went away. But the physical ability to get out there at a level he hadn’t in years, that was something he needed to prove he could do.
The 42 snaps he played in Jacksonville last week were the most he’s played in a game since Nov. 6, 2022, or nearly three years ago. As that season wore on, the impacts of the medical condition which hadn’t been diagnosed at that point began to wear on him. He played in 2023, but his availability and production waned, as he never played more than 37 snaps in any game, and averaged 21.4 snaps per game. And of course, he played no snaps in 2024, so this workload was something he had to acclimate himself to.
“I think your body through an NFL season gets callused,” Renfrow said. “And I think a lot of the guys in here will tell you after you finish and restart the next year, once you take a couple months off, you have to get re-callused, right? And that’s where I’m at. I have to get re-callused, take the hits, get the load on my legs, feel good about running that route 100 times and not popping anything or tweaking anything.
“So we’re in the process of that, but hopefully we can continue to get better, continue to get callused and feel better.”