Sean Payton and Mike Macdonald have not faced off much as head coaches in the NFL, but the first time they did led to controversy between the two.
Macdonald took over as the Seattle Seahawks in 2024, drawing Sean Payton’s Denver Broncos in Week 1. Since it was the first week, and there wasn’t much tape on the 2024 Broncos yet, Macdonald’s staff relied on social media clips from training camp to scout for the opponent.
When Payton found out, the veteran head coach apparently got extremely frustrated at the Seahawks, even going as far as considering accusing them of cheating to the league. While this now appears to be water under the bridge, it was a pretty intense way for Macdonald to start his head coaching career.
Here’s a breakdown of the history between Payton and Macdonald.
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Why Sean Payton accused Mike Macdonald of cheating
While appearing on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Macdonald told a story to Bensinger that he didn’t mean to go public. The head coach explained that, before the first game of the 2024 season, the Seahawks used social media footage to scout the Broncos, which led to a “cold war” between he and Payton.
“So we play them in our first game. Fans will tape or post plays from training camp on Twitter, so it’s public knowledge. So we took like 100 plays from their training camp; we were scouting them,” Macdonald said. “He got wind of it, and he lost it.”
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Macdonald continued to say that Payton was furious to the point where he called Seahawks general manager John Schneider, threatening to take these cheating accusations to the league.
“So he called John and he basically threatened to come out publicly and do a whole Patriot, like, Spygate type of thing,” Macdonald added. “So we had to counter with him, to say like, ‘Hey, look, if you come out at us, we’re going to sue you, because it’s not true.’ He backed down, but he was killing John.”
#Seahawks HC Mike Macdonald says #Broncos HC Sean Payton threatened to accuse Seattle of a Spygate-style cheating scandal in 2024. Macdonald says they found training camp clips on X and used them to their advantage when they played. (📽️ @GrahamBensinger) https://t.co/xzRv3J6xh2
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) September 22, 2026
After the story came out, Macdonald called Payton to apologize and say he didn’t want that story to become public, as he thought he was just talking while the cameras were off.
“It’s something that I didn’t intend for public use but you know, it just felt like it was the most appropriate thing to reach out to Sean and really just apologize to him for having that end up being public where it wasn’t meant to,” he said.
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Payton, meanwhile, forgave Macdonald and said that he understands why there was a misunderstanding. This situation also seemed to enlighten Payton about fans taking videos of practices and putting them on social media.
“We spoke. He and I are good. Lord knows I’ve been in his position,” Payton said. “It allowed us to figure out how to handle our training camp relative to just videos. I don’t think anything was intentional by fans, but at first, you’re kind of thinking, How could…’ Then we did some research online of what was available, and that’s kind of how we changed our policy.”
