{"id":824467,"date":"2026-03-21T04:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T04:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/824467\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T04:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T04:03:16","slug":"seahawks-exercise-fifth-year-options-on-jaxon-smith-njigba-devon-witherspoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/824467\/","title":{"rendered":"Seahawks exercise fifth-year options on Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Devon Witherspoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifth-year option season has officially begun.<\/p>\n

The Seahawks have announced<\/a> that they have officially exercised the 2027 options on the first-round contracts signed in 2023 by receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba and cornerback Devon Witherspoon.<\/p>\n

Smith-Njigba, the 20th overall pick in 2023 and the 2025 NFL offensive player of the year, now has a fully-guaranteed salary of $23.852 million for 2027. Witherspoon, taken fifth overall, will make $21.161 million in 2027.<\/p>\n

Both will be seeking new contracts, sooner than later. The fifth-year option gives them protection in the event of a fluke injury in the early portions of the 2026 offseason program, since the deadline for exercising the option doesn\u2019t arrive until May 1.<\/p>\n

Smith-Njigba has said he believes he should be the highest-paid receiver in the NFL<\/a>. That would require an extension with a new-money average in excess of $40 million. To get Smith-Njigba to a new-money APY of $41 million, the Seahawks would need to sign him to a five-year, $148.4 million contract. That would equate to a total average from signing of $29.68 million, given what he\u2019s due to earn over the next two seasons.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the timing for their second deals, it\u2019s no surprise that the Seahawks plan to keep Smith-Njigba and Witherspoon. In the coming weeks, other teams will be exercising the fifth-year options on 2023 first-round draft picks who have performed well enough in their first three seasons to justify it.<\/p>\n

There were only 31 first-round picks in 2023. The Dolphins lost theirs as punishment for tampering with Tom Brady and Sean Payton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifth-year option season has officially begun. The Seahawks have announced that they have officially exercised the 2027 options…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-824467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116265183503521034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824467","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=824467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}