The Seattle Seahawks and defensive tackle Leonard Williams agreed to a three-year contract extension worth $90 million, with $56 million guaranteed, multiple outlets including ESPN, NFL.com and CBS Sports confirmed Thursday.
The 32-year-old was entering the final season of a three-year, $64.5 million deal he had signed with Seattle in March 2024, a contract that had been set to make him a free agent in 2027. Under the new extension, Williams' annual average value of $30 million ties him with Tampa Bay's Vita Vea for fifth among the highest-paid interior defensive linemen in the league, behind Philadelphia's Jalen Carter, Dallas's Quinnen Williams, Tennessee's Jeffery Simmons and Kansas City's Chris Jones.
Seattle acquired Williams via trade from the New York Giants in October 2023 in exchange for second- and fifth-round draft picks. Since then, he has appeared in 43 games for the Seahawks, recording 22 sacks, 34 tackles for loss and 61 quarterback hits. Last season, Williams posted 7 sacks, nine tackles for loss and 22 quarterback hits during the regular season, then added a sack, a tackle for loss and three quarterback hits across three postseason games as Seattle won Super Bowl LX. He earned second-team All-Pro honors for the first time in his career and was voted the NFL's best defensive tackle in offseason polling conducted by ESPN's Jeremy Fowler.
"It feels amazing," Williams said while holding his newborn son, Zion, minutes after signing the deal. "I think this is maybe my first time being extended while under contract with a team. It's really great news."
The extension makes Williams the fourth Seahawks player to receive a significant new contract this offseason, following wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba's four-year, $168.6 million deal that made him the NFL's highest-paid receiver, cornerback Devon Witherspoon's four-year, $132 million deal that made him the league's top-paid cornerback, and outside linebacker Derick Hall's three-year, $42 million extension signed in June.
Head coach Mike Macdonald praised Williams as a foundational piece of the roster. "We couldn't be more excited to get the deal done," Macdonald said. "He's a foundational player to our club from when we got here… just an absolute A-plus person, teammate, the day-to-day, really just how much he's invested into our team and really his teammates."
A first-round pick of the New York Jets out of USC in 2015, Williams has recorded 61.5 career sacks across 175 regular-season games over 11 NFL seasons. The extension news arrived just a day after NFL owners approved the $9.612 billion sale of the Seahawks from the trust of the late Paul G. Allen to a group led by Vinod, Neeru and Neal Khosla, marking a significant week of change for the franchise both on and off the field.