The Seattle Seahawks have had a fantastic 2026. Back in February, the team capped a dominant postseason run by winning Super Bowl LX. And despite losing a few contributors this offseason, including Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker, who signed with the Kansas City Chiefs, most of Seattle’s championship core is returning for a run at a second straight title.
Now the Seahawks are spending heavily to keep that core together.
Seattle and star cornerback Devon Witherspoon have agreed to a four-year, $132 million contract extension, including more than $101 million in guaranteed money. The deal averages $33 million per season and makes Witherspoon the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.
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Witherspoon had been scheduled to collect about $5.1 million in 2026, followed by a fully guaranteed fifth-year option worth roughly $21.2 million in 2027. Instead, Seattle locked him up with a deal that pushes him to the top of a cornerback market that has exploded in recent years.
- Devon Witherspoon: $33 million per year
- Denzel Ward: $31.1 million per year
- Trent McDuffie: $31 million per year
- Sauce Gardner: $30.1 million per year
- Derek Stingley Jr.: $30 million per year
What makes Witherspoon’s contract especially impressive is how quickly he reached this point. The Seahawks selected him fifth overall in the 2023 NFL Draft, and he has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons. He is just the fifth player in Seahawks history to begin his career with three consecutive Pro Bowl selections.
Witherspoon was also a major contributor to Seattle’s championship defense, which allowed the fewest points in the NFL during the 2025 regular season. In Super Bowl LX, he recorded a sack and later hit New England quarterback Drake Maye on a play that resulted in Uchenna Nwosu returning the turnover for a touchdown.
There’s also a satisfying bit of history behind the deal.
Seattle acquired the draft pick used to select Witherspoon as part of the blockbuster trade that sent Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos in 2022. At the time, moving a franchise quarterback who had won a Super Bowl and spent a decade in Seattle represented a massive gamble. Three years after using one of the resulting picks on Witherspoon, the Seahawks have turned that asset into a three-time Pro Bowler, Super Bowl champion, and now the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history.
And Witherspoon isn’t the only member of Seattle’s 2023 draft class to land a record-setting payday.
The Seahawks used their other first-round selection that year, the 20th overall pick, on wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Earlier this offseason, Smith-Njigba signed the largest contract for a receiver in NFL history, a four-year extension worth $168.6 million.
That means Seattle now employs both the highest-paid cornerback and highest-paid wide receiver in NFL history, and both players came from the Seahawks’ two first-round picks in the same 2023 draft.
Smith-Njigba’s extension averages roughly $42.15 million per season. Witherspoon’s new deal averages $33 million.
That’s an extremely expensive draft class. Three years later, with a Super Bowl trophy already in hand, it’s also difficult to argue with the results.
