The number is now on the table. The Seattle Seahawks have offered Devon Witherspoon an extension worth more than $30 million per year, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported Wednesday, and the finalized deal is expected to make him the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL.
That would push Witherspoon past Trent McDuffie, whose $31 million average currently tops the position. It would also confirm what the market structure has suggested for weeks: Witherspoon’s talks are "further along" than the Patriots’ negotiations with Christian Gonzalez, per Rapoport, even though the two are tied together — both were 2023 first-rounders, both are represented by WIN Sports Group, and both deals are expected to be done by Week 1.
Sequencing matters in that arrangement. Whoever signs first sets the floor for the other, and Rapoport notes a Witherspoon deal should quickly produce a Gonzalez agreement in New England — possibly at a matching or higher number. Pro Football Rumors adds that Cleveland’s Denzel Ward, still playing on a $20.1 million-per-year deal from 2022, is another cornerback whose next contract gets easier to price once the 2023 class signs.
Witherspoon’s case for the top of the market is short and unambiguous. Three seasons, three Pro Bowls. Second-team All-Pro in 2025, when he anchored the league’s top-ranked defense through a Super Bowl win over Gonzalez’s Patriots. And the part that separates him from boundary-only peers: Pro Football Focus has graded him among the league’s best run-defending and pass-rushing corners from the slot, where his physicality changes what a defense can call.
Seattle’s veterans report Friday, and there is no indication the contract talks will bleed into any camp drama. The remaining question is simply where above $30 million the number lands — and whether Gonzalez’s camp lets it stand as the ceiling for long.
