Mike Macdonald and the Seattle Seahawks will face Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos on the road in their Week 6 matchup, but things have already started heating up. During a recent appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Macdonald revealed that the Seahawks collected roughly 100 plays from fan-posted training camp videos of the Broncos and used them to prepare for their Week 1 matchup against Denver during the 2024 season, Macdonald’s first season as Seattle’s head coach.
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Things escalated when Payton found out about this, as the head coach threatened to go public about the incident. While nothing happened at the time, new updates surrounding the same incident have added another layer for Macdonald and the Seahawks. Per reports, this part of Macdonald’s interview with Bensinger wasn’t supposed to be released publicly in the first place.
Per Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, this conversation between Coach Macdonald and Bensinger wasn’t for public consumption. As Florio reported, the Seahawks didn’t even know that the conversation was “more off than on” the record discussion before the clip went viral.
The development gained momentum after the clip reportedly went viral on Tuesday. Macdonald and Bensinger were already wearing microphones when the exchange took place. However, the footage appeared to have been recorded before the formal interview got underway.
The clip offers a wider view of the set, with the production crew and various camera, audio, and lighting equipment visible in the background, as reported by Awful Announcing. It also appears that the main cameras had not yet started recording.
In the clip, Coach Macdonald explained that fans attending Denver’s training camp had recorded and posted plays from practice on social media. The Seahawks, meanwhile, used those plays to prepare for their Week 1 matchup against the Broncos.
At the same time, this wasn’t necessarily some elaborate covert operation. Macdonald described it as the Seahawks seeing publicly available footage and incorporating it into their preparation. Ultimately, Seattle beat Denver 26-20, as Macdonald recorded the first win of his head coaching career.
Things, however, escalated when Payton found out, called the Seahawks’ general manager John Schneider, and threatened to publicly accuse Seattle of cheating.
“He basically threatened to come out publicly and do a whole Patriot Spygate type of thing,” said Macdonald. “I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh my god. We didn’t cheat.’ They thought it was a Michigan thing where we had a plant and the whole thing. So we had to counter with him and say, ‘If you come out with this, we’re going to sue you because it’s not true.”
While Sean Payton eventually backed out of the allegations, Macdonald believed that both teams were in a cold war.
“It was like the Cold War,” he said. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to hit the button. I’m going to hit the button.’ ‘Well, we’re going to hit the button.’ None of us hit the button.”
Now, it has been revealed that Mike Macdonald and the Seahawks were not aware that the clip would go public. That said, the Seahawks remain unbeaten through the first two weeks of the 2026 season and will now face the Broncos in the Week 6 matchup.