National Football League cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon of Oak Park, California has retired at the age of 31 according to Ryan Canfield of Fox News on Tuesday. The news comes as a significant surprise because Witherspoon just signed a one-year contract worth $1.41 million with the Washington Commanders in May.
Witherspoon played with three National Football League franchises. He was with the San Francisco 49ers for four years from 2017 to 2020, two seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2021 to 2022, and three seasons with the Los Angeles Rams from 2023 to 2025.
This past season with the Rams, Witherspoon played six games with the Rams. He missed the majority of the season with a broken shoulder blade. Witherspoon had eight combined tackles (six solo tackles and two assisted tackles), one interception and two pass deflections. The first pass deflection came on September 7 in a 14-9 Rams win over the Houston Texans (the Rams’s first game of the year), and the second pass deflection and interception came on January 4 in a 37-20 Rams win over the Arizona Cardinals (the Rams’s last game of the year).
In Witherspoon’s career, he played 96 games. He had 243 combined tackles (204 solo tackles and 39 assisted tackles), six tackles for a loss, 13 interceptions for 129 yards, one pick six, 60 pass deflections, one forced fumble and three fumble recoveries. The pick six was for 25 yards and came on September 8, 2019. Witherspoon’s interception was for 25 yards and came off of Tampa Bay Buccaneers’s quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in a 31-17 San Francisco win.
Witherspoon was initially the 49ers’s third round pick, 66th overall, in the 2017 NFL Draft. He played his college football at the University of Colorado. Witherspoon is the third player to retire this past week following Andrus Peat and Ja’Lynn Polk.
