Seahawks' 2027 salary cap space takes major hit

JSN and Devon Witherspoon get fully-guaranteed years added to their deals

The Seahawks exercised the fifth-year options for Devon Witherspoon and Jaxon Smith-Njigba on Friday, an expected move that both gives Seattle the necessary leverage to take a bolder approach in extension negotiations and a significant blow to their 2027 cap table.

Vis-a-vis the aforementioned extensions, the cap hits for Witherspoon and Smith-Njigba will not be permanent. The Seahawks will get much of the space back, sort of like a stress ball that you can squeeze to make temporarily smaller and then it bounces back to its original size.

But for the time being, Seattle’s 2027 cap space was nearly chopped in half this week:

• Devon Witherspoon: $21.2 million

• Jaxon Smith-Njigba: $23.9 million

Adding $45.1 million to their 2027 salary commitments, the Seahawks saw their projected cap next year drop to $49.5 million.

This is fine.

But we can also address the change, how the Seahawks cap will change over the next 12 months, and what Witherspoon and JSN could be paid on their next contracts to bring those numbers down.