Anyone wondering why the Seahawks took cornerback Devon Witherspoon with the fifth overall pick of this year’s draft got a pretty good illustration of it on Monday night.
The Seahawks came into the game down three defensive backs and they slid Witherspoon into the nickel spot as a result of the missing pieces. It turned out to be a great move for the defense because Witherspoon was all over the field during the 24-3 win. He sacked Daniel Jones twice and returned an interception 97 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter.
It’s the second time that a defensive back has had multiple sacks and a pick-six since sacks became an official stat in 1982 and head coach Pete Carroll said the “beautiful job” that Witherspoon did is a sign of things to come.
“Playing the position, if you compare it to playing corner, there’s so many more things that happen,” Carroll said in his postgame press conference. “And there’s guys on both sides of you, you’re not playing on the edge, and there’s runs and passes and blitzes and mixes of coverages and things like that, that makes it a position for a guy that can handle all of that naturally. A lot of this is natural skill and awareness that he could pick stuff up so soon and be so dynamic in there in such short order. He’s just going to get better and better. And so, it’s a really, really exciting thing to watch for us and so we’ll keep going with it.”
If Monday night was just a preview of what the rest of Witherspoon’s rookie year will look like, the Seahawks may be celebrating a defensive rookie of the year award winner once the season is over.
