{"id":824332,"date":"2026-03-21T02:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/824332\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T02:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T02:44:18","slug":"seahawks-exercise-fifth-year-options-for-wr-jaxon-smith-njigba-cb-devon-witherspoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/824332\/","title":{"rendered":"Seahawks Exercise Fifth-Year Options for WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, CB Devon Witherspoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seahawks knocked it out of the park on the first night of the 2023 NFL Draft, taking Illinois cornerback Devon Witherspoon<\/a> with the fifth overall pick of the draft and adding Ohio State wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba<\/a> 15 picks later. Both players were huge contributors in the team\u2019s 2025 Super Bowl-winning season, and as extensions continue to be worked towards, Seattle has officially announced its decision to exercise the fifth-year options<\/a> on both players\u2019 rookie contracts. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Witherspoon established himself as an immediate star as a rookie, starting 13 of 14 game appearances and logging 16 passes defensed, a 97-yard pick six, and three sacks en route to the first of three straight Pro Bowl seasons. Pro Football Focus (subscription required<\/a>) graded Witherspoon as the sixth-best cornerback in the NFL. Starting all 17 games in Year 2, PFF\u2019s 16th-best cornerbacks that season finished second on the team with 98 total tackles, adding on a sack, six tackles for loss, and nine passes defensed. This year, five missed games near the start of the year led to decreased stat total, but Witherspoon\u2019s excellence when he got back on the field was apparent as he earned second-team All-Pro honors and graded out as PFF\u2019s best cornerback in the NFL.<\/p>\n

Smith-Njigba didn\u2019t start nearly as hot as Witherspoon, but he\u2019s taken major leaps in each new season. Playing in every game his rookie year, Smith-Njigba only made three starts and finished behind D.K. Metcalf<\/a> and Tyler Lockett<\/a> in all three receiving categories with 63 receptions, 628 receiving yards, and four receiving touchdowns. Playing in every game of Year 2, as well, Smith-Njigba established himself as the new WR1 in Seattle, surpassing Metcalf and Lockett with 100 receptions for 1,130 yards and six touchdowns, earning his first Pro Bowl honors. Benefitting from the departures of Metcalf and Lockett and the arrival of Sam Darnold<\/a>, Smith-Njigba once again led the team in all three categories with 119 catches for a league-leading 1,793 receiving yards and ten touchdowns, securing Pro Bowl, first-team All-Pro, and Offensive Player of the Year honors.<\/p>\n

In the days since the season ended with confetti in San Francisco and parade buses in Seattle, the Seahawks have begun the work<\/a> of attempting to extend Smith-Njigba. The 2025 OPOY disclosed that he does believe<\/a> he deserves \u201cto be the highest paid\u201d wide receiver in the NFL, but at the moment, with two years now remaining on his deal, he was \u201cnot too pressed\u201d to work out an extended deal. We haven\u2019t seen the same reports concerning Witherspoon, but that surely doesn\u2019t mean the Seahawks won\u2019t be doing everything they can to land both big fish on huge, long-term deals.<\/p>\n

According to Michael-Shawn Dugar of The Athletic, the value<\/a> of Smith-Njigba\u2019s fifth-year option is projected to be about $23.8MM while Witherpoon\u2019s projects around $21.1MM. Witherspoon\u2019s fifth-year option was inflated to its maximum possible value due to the pair of Pro Bowls he made in his first two seasons. With the top of the receiver market currently set at $40.25MM per year and the cornerback market topping out at $31MM per year, the Seahawks are likely content with those fifth-year figures. There\u2019s a chance neither player sees those options, though, as Seattle will likely continue to push for extensions in the months to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Seahawks knocked it out of the park on the first night of the 2023 NFL Draft, taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2081],"tags":[2865,7,2869,6,238,237,261,2635,3571],"class_list":{"0":"post-824332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-devon-witherspoon","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-jaxon-smith-njigba","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-seahawks","13":"tag-seattle","14":"tag-seattle-seahawks","15":"tag-seattleseahawks","16":"tag-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824332","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=824332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}