Raiders to sign running back to replace Jalen Richard
With running back depth thin because of the extended injury of Jalen Richard, the Raiders signed Peyton Barber on Friday off the Washington Football Team’s practice squad and added him to their 53-man roster.
Now in his sixth season, Barber has 2,245 yards rushing and 19 touchdowns. Just as important, given his expected role as a third-down back, he has 61 catches for 361 yards and two touchdowns.
The addition leaves the roster at the 53-man limit, but the Raiders will have to make a subtraction soon to make room for veteran linebacker K.J. Wright, who reached terms on a one-year contract Thursday.
The Raiders moved around some money and created salary cap space to make the Wright deal work. They reworked the contracts of Yannick Ngakoue and Nick Kwiatkoski this week by converting salary to signing bonuses and now have an estimated $8 million to spend under the cap. Part of that will go toward signing Wright.
Ngakoue converted $12 million of salary into a signing bonus, bringing his 2021 salary to $1 million. Kwiatkoski converted $2.885 million of his salary into a signing bonus and will make $990,000 in base salary this year.
The Raiders also signed veteran linebacker Marquel Lee to the practice squad and came to a practice squad agreement with wide receiver David Moore.
To make room for Lee, the Raiders released linebacker Max Richardson from the practice squad.
Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com. Follow @VinnyBonsignore on Twitter.
