Hard Knox episode details Seahawks’ Witherspoon contract saga

Published 10:35 am Wednesday, August 5, 2026

They focused on self-deprecating Mike Macdonald, and the coach’s young family.

They highlighted the fiery, R-rated demands of new running backs coach Thomas Hammock to his players in a position meeting to “go up there and meet the (expletive) in the (expletive) hole!…Don’t tell me what you can’t do! F***** SHOW ME!”

They featured the players getting their Super Bowl rings in a private ceremony at the start. They featured Sam Darnold and Cooper Kupp talking in a position room about Kupp attending the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce wedding.

“You went to their wedding??!” Darnold asked his two-time Super Bowl-winning wide receiver.

“I did,” Kupp deadpanned, in a flex.

They featured Derick Hall’s massive, hydraulicked, so-far-off-the-road truck.

Yet the news NFL Films captured and HBO aired Tuesday evening in the first episode of the Seahawks training camp “Hard Knocks” documentary series involved Devon Witherspoon and the team trying to get a mammoth contract extension done with their three-time Pro Bowl cornerback.

There is a scene about 20 minutes into the roughly 50-minute first episode in which general manager John Schneider is filmed by robotic camera in his upstairs office at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. He’s talking to Macdonald. The GM is talking about a report by NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport that the Seahawks were supposedly offering to make Witherspoon the league’s highest-paid cornerback, which would be more than $31 million per season — and that Witherspoon wasn’t accepting that.

Schneider voiced his concern that Witherspoon will be upset at that report and characterization of him. Schneider told Macdonald he called Rapoport and directed the reporter to tell Witherspoon’s agent that that report did not come from the team.

Schneider said he had Mo Kelly, the team’s vice president of player affairs, and because of 22 years with the franchise, perhaps the man the players trust most inside the team’s building. The GM told his coach Kelly explained the situation of the report with Witherspoon, and that the 25-year-old cornerback was cool about it.

The next scene is Witherspoon, who has been fully participating in all the Seahawks’ nine training-camp practices, driving his car and talking to a Hard Knocks camera.

Witherspoon has not been made available by the team to talk so far this training camp, as the Seahawks continue to try to get his contract done.

“Outside of quarterbacks, we got the hardest position on the field, man,” Witherspoon says in the first Hard Knocks episode. “It’s hard to guard these guys, especially when you can’t touch them past 5 yards.

“So when you got a guy who can really shut down a receiver, can be versatile like I am, you don’t come across those guys often, for real. So, when you got a premier corner like that it’s just—you pay him.

“Like, please pay him. That’s all we sayin’.

“But it’s not really somethin’ that’s on my mind right now. My mind is to go win football games, bro. We’re trying to be the best team that we can be for this year. And stuff like that just get in the way of doin’ that.”

The next episode of Seahawks Hard Knocks is next Tuesday, Aug. 11. A new episode will air on HBO each week through the final one Sept. 1.

Seattle’s season begins Sept. 9 with the NFL’s kickoff game at Lumen Field, a Super Bowl rematch with the New England Patriots.