Devon Witherspoon is listed as a cornerback. But that small bit of information is likely the least useful thing you can know about how Seattle plays him.
Witherspoon played 70 defensive snaps against New England last night, and lined up just about everywhere Seattle could reasonably put him. He played 41 snaps in the slot (58.6%), 16 at outside cornerback (22.9%), 12 in the box (17.1%) and one on the defensive line. He added two more snaps on the field-goal block unit.
Break those snaps down by assignment, and the picture gets even better. Witherspoon spent 34 snaps in coverage and 27 defending the run. On the other nine, Seattle sent him after the quarterback.
The results weren’t particularly pretty to open the 2026 campaign. He finished with a 56.4 PFF grade and allowed seven catches on eight targets, but he did record a hit on quarterback Drake Maye.
But what is more interesting is the deployment. Seattle didn’t just move Witherspoon around. It asked him to cover, fit the run and rush the passer, often from completely different starting points. And as varied as the role looked Wednesday night, it wasn’t new.
Picking up from where he left off
Witherspoon played 902 defensive snaps across five different alignments in 2025, spending 461 at outside cornerback (51.1%), 300 in the slot (33.3%), 119 in the box (13.2%) and 11 each at free safety and on the defensive line.
The season totals only tell part of the story, though, because Seattle wasn’t simply rotating him between a couple of roles. Witherspoon lined up at three or more spots in all 15 of his games, hit four or more in 12 of them and appeared at all five in four. He even logged snaps on the defensive line in seven different games and at free safety in nine.
His workload could look completely different from one week to the next, too. Witherspoon’s slot usage ranged from 10.6% of his snaps in one game to 77.6% in another, while his outside-corner rate swung from 7.5% to 70.2%.
Week 4 at Arizona offered one version of the job, with 52 of his 67 snaps coming in the slot and only five outside. Five weeks later in Washington, Seattle had almost completely flipped the assignment, sending him outside for 33 of 47 snaps and into the slot for only five.
None of that movement was an attempt to find a role that suited him. Witherspoon earned a 90.1 overall grade in 2025, the best of any cornerback in football, while playing all of the roles.
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Now Seattle is sending him after quarterbacks
The newest wrinkle in Witherspoon’s role might also be the most interesting. He rushed the passer only 28 times across 15 games in 2025, accounting for 3.1% of his defensive snaps, with 21 of those rushes coming during his 12 regular-season games.
Seattle started leaning into that part of his game in the Super Bowl, sending him seven times and getting three pressures, including a sack and two quarterback hits, on the way to a 91.4 pass-rushing grade across three playoff games.
And if that looked like a one-game wrinkle, Week 1 suggested otherwise. Witherspoon rushed the passer nine more times Wednesday night, already topping his Super Bowl workload in the first game of the new season.
One of the most versatile players in the game
At this point, calling Witherspoon a cornerback tells you what position is listed next to his name, but not much about the job Seattle actually asks him to do. He can cover outside, work from the slot, drop into the box or come after the quarterback, and the Seahawks have shown little hesitation in asking him to do all of it.