Witherspoon’s rare combination of physical and mental gifts make him a player that, even when he’s not directly making a play, allows others around him to make plays. Never was that more obvious than in last season’s win over Arizona in which, on a fourth-and-one play, Witherspoon kept Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray from running for a first down, pressured Murray into making an inaccurate throw that was picked off by Coby Bryant, then ran down the field to throw a block that took out two Arizona players, helping clear the way for a 69-yard touchdown. Oh, and Witherspoon even worked a little taunting in as the play unfolded.<\/p>\n
“It just embodies Spoon, doesn’t it?” Durde said after that game. “He goes one way, then he reacts to a play, uses his football IQ that is off the chain, then he talks crap to someone, then he realizes, then he runs off and then he goes and throws a block, then talks crap to someone. It’s just him. He’s a ball of energy and he’s so smart, he’s a leader of our defense, and I just respect the hell out of him.”<\/p>\n
Plays like that, which don’t show up in the stat sheet but help make those around him better, are why Macdonald has taken to calling Witherspoon a “force multiplier” and those will no doubt come in 2025 as well. Macdonald’s goal, however, is to also find ways to help Witherspoon show up on the stat sheet, be it by recording more sacks as a blitzer or putting him in positions to get his hands on the ball in the secondary.<\/p>\n
“I’ll tell you what, this guy, talk about force multipliers on your football team \u2014 that is Devon Witherspoon,” Macdonald said last season. “This guy, he’s an elite competitor. He’s a guy that hopefully, he’s leading the charge for us for a long time here. This guy, we talked about this at length, but he’s worth a shout-out. He’s so intelligent, he can play all the multiple spots, all the energy we feed off this guy and how competitive he is. Plays the way we want to play.<\/p>\n
“You kind of want to play him everywhere, and so that’s probably my biggest compliment to him. It’s trying to figure out how we can play him the best to make him affect the game. We’re thinking through that lens, and frankly, it’s nothing that he’s not doing that’s not creating production. You could probably put it on me to get him into better spots so he can go affect the game. But that’s definitely a focus.”<\/p>\n
We’ll have to wait to see what Macdonald has in store for one of his best players in 2025, but however Witherspoon’s role evolves, he’s up for the challenge.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know how Coach Mike is going to use me, but I just know whatever he needs me to do, I’m going to do it,” Witherspoon said during offseason workouts.<\/p>\n
And for as impressive as Witherspoon has been two years into his career, what might be the best development for Seattle’s defense is the fact that he continues to grow despite that early success.<\/p>\n
“I love him,” Durde said during offseason workouts. “I really think he’s taking a step. He’s conscious of his game, he’s trying to work on little things and trying to push himself. He has little goals that he wants to get. He’s really pushing and intentional in every practice that he does. He’s one of the real leaders of our defense.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Witherspoon’s rare combination of physical and mental gifts make him a player that, even when he’s not directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[7,509,507,41063,506,31439,6,238,237,261,2635],"class_list":{"0":"post-209993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-homepage-hero","10":"tag-news-national-feature","11":"tag-news-position-primer-training-camp","12":"tag-news-stories","13":"tag-news-training-camp","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-seahawks","16":"tag-seattle","17":"tag-seattle-seahawks","18":"tag-seattleseahawks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114859502918501761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}