The Seattle Seahawks have locked up another of their young cornerstones, agreeing a four-year, $132 million extension on Saturday with cornerback Devon Witherspoon, according to league sources with knowledge of the deal who were not authorised to speak publicly.
The package makes Witherspoon the highest-paid cornerback in league history, in both total value and average annual value; his $132 million clears the $124 million the Los Angeles Rams handed Trent McDuffie after trading for him earlier this spring, and his $33 million a year nudges past the Cleveland Browns’ Denzel Ward, at $31.1 million, for the richest per-season figure the position has yet produced.
The context is the tell. Earlier in the off-season Seattle made Jaxon Smith-Njigba, taken fifteen picks after Witherspoon in the same 2023 first round, the highest-paid wide receiver in the NFL, and in March, the team picked up the fifth-year options on both men, tying them down through 2027. Witherspoon had been set to earn $5.1 million in 2026 and $21.2 million in 2027 on that option; paying now, before either figure resets the market again, is the unglamorous sort of planning that rarely makes the highlight reels but tends to show up in the standings.
None of which would count for much if the player did not hold up, and he has. Seattle drafted Witherspoon fifth overall in 2023, the highest selection of John Schneider’s seventeen years running the roster, and the 25-year-old has answered it with a Pro Bowl nod in each of his three seasons and a second-team All-Pro selection in 2025.