Seahawks’ Devon Witherspoon shines in Super Bowl: ‘A walking Hall of Famer’

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – He was here, sitting several floors up above the field and supporting his old team from a Levi’s Stadium suite.

“Go Hawks!” Russell Wilson posted on social media during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 60.

Down below, there they were, three key figures of this Seahawks’ championship team brought in through the draft picks the Seahawks acquired in the blockbuster trade of Wilson in 2022.

Deemed a stunning trade at the time, the Seahawks’ decision to move on from Wilson helped springboard them here, less than four years later, back to NFL supremacy on an ahead-of-schedule trajectory.

And Devon Witherspoon, Charles Cross and Derick Hall each had a big hand in the Seahawks’ 29-13 victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday, and two other draft picks from the Wilson trade – Boye Mafe and Dareke Young – have been consistent contributors in the franchise’s second Super Bowl-winning season.

Cross played every snap at left tackle Sunday, and Hall had two of the Seahawks’ six sacks of New England’s Drake Maye, one of which was a strip-sack that resulted in the first of Maye’s three turnovers.

Best of all, Witherspoon had – considering the enormity of the stage – perhaps the most influential game of his young career. He had two sacks on cornerback blitzes, the second of which resulted in an interception that Uchenna Nwosu returned 45 yards for a touchdown that served as an exclamation point on another stellar showing from the Seahawks’ Dark Side defense.

The No. 5 overall pick in the 2023 draft, Witherspoon has emerged as the star many envisioned.

“He’s my favorite player in the league,” Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV said. “I’m telling you, he’s a walking Hall of Famer. He can do anything out there.”

Maye, the Patriots’ second-year quarterback, finished runner-up to Matthew Stafford in the NFL MVP voting this season, and the Seahawks were especially wary of Maye’s scrambling ability coming into Sunday. They wanted to contain him to the pocket, and they wanted to pressure him and force him into hurried decisions.

They executed all of that nearly flawlessly.

We knew he’s their whole team,” Nwosu said. “We knew if we affected him, their whole game plan would be nothing.

Much of the Seahawks’ success on defense this season owed to their ability to pressure quarterbacks without resorting to blitzing. They could collapse a pocket consistently enough while rushing just the standard four defenders, allowing them to drop seven defenders into coverage.

During the regular season, the Seahawks had one of the lowest blitz rates (19.3%) of any defense in the NFL, per Pro Football Reference.

Witherspoon hadn’t been called on much to blitz from the secondary. On Sunday, he finally let loose a bit.

“I just made plays that come to me. It’s nothing crazy. I’m not going on my way to do anything special,” Witherspoon said. “… I’m just ready to celebrate with my guys, man. We put a lot of work into this season and now it’s time to celebrate.”

Witherspoon, 25, has been named to the Pro Bowl in his first three seasons. He was named to the All-Pro second team this season and he was the No. 1-ranked cornerback in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus metrics this season.

“ ‘Spoon’ is special,” said veteran safety Julian Love, who had a second-half interception off Maye. “I think we all look to him and how his style of play is. If you love football … and you put on our tape, ’21’ (Witherspoon) jumps off the screen. Maybe the stats don’t show it. Maybe the analytics don’t say whatever. But if you watch him play, he’s special. And it’s every single play. He gives his all and we all feed off that. …

“He’s going to be an all-time great.”