Seahawks, CB Devon Witherspoon Agree To Extension

The two sides have agreed to a four-year, $132MM extension, ending a “heated” final round of negotiations, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The deal includes more than $101MM in guaranteed money, also a record for an NFL cornerback.

Witherspoon, 25, has certainly earned that status. The No. 5 pick in the 2023 draft earned three straight Pro Bowls to start his NFL career with a second-team All-Pro and Super Bowl victory to cap off his 2025 season. Once the Seahawks paid fellow 2023 first-rounder Smith-Njigba, an extension for Witherspoon simply became a matter of time. But he held firm through the spring and much of the summer, holding out not just for the biggest cornerback contract in league history, but a true top-of-the-market deal. His $33MM AAV is not just $2MM more than the deals signed by Trent McDuffie and Denzel Ward earlier this year. It is also worth 10.95% of the 2026 salary cap, eclipsing the extensions signed by 2022 first-rounders Derek Stingley and Sauce Gardner last year.

Witherspoon’s contract also represents a remarkable 37.5% increase at the top of the cornerback market in the last two years. For comparison, the highest wide receiver AAV has increased by just 20.4% in the same period. Next to benefit from this jump will be Christian Gonzalez, who is being represented by the same agency as Witherspoon amid his negotiations with the Patriots. The 24-year-old is also seen as an ascending talent and one of the league’s best cornerbacks, but he has just one Pro Bowl and one first-team All-Pro nod to his name. His coverage statistics, though, have been just as good, if not better, than Witherspoon’s. Gonzalez now has a firm standing to demand the same per-year salary, if not a small, symbolic bump to place him atop the market as Gardner received last year after Stingley’s deal.

The Seahawks now have Smith-Njigba and Witherspoon locked down through 2031. The team also signed left tackle Charles Cross, right tackle Abraham Lucas, and edge rusher Derick Hall to extensions in the last year, solidifying the long-term core that carried them to their Super Bowl victory in February. Defensive tackles Byron Murphy and Leonard Williams could be up next. The former, the No. 16 overall pick in 2024, will be extension-eligible in the offseason, while Leonard is set to hit free agency and could be signed sooner. And then there’s Sam Darnold, who will be a free agent in 2028 and has already played himself into a raise over the $33.5MM AAV deal he signed last offseason.