A primetime clash between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos next month just got a little spicier.
In an interview on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, widely circulated on Twitter on Tuesday morning, Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald shared a story about an issue Sean Payton took with the team’s preparation ahead of a 2024 meeting.
Macdonald told Bensinger that ahead of Seattle’s season-opener, and his coaching debut, against the Denver Broncos in 2024, the team took around 100 plays from Denver’s
training camp that had been shared by fans on Twitter and scouted them.
According to Macdonald, the still-yet-to-be good natured Payton took issue with this, and called general manager John Schneider to equate it to the New England Patriots’ SpyGate scandal, as well as to threaten to go public with it. In turn, Macdonald, Schneider, and the Seahawks had to respond saying they would take legal action if he made a false claim like that publicly.
“He basically threatened to come out publicly and do a whole Patriot, like Spygate type of thing,” Macdonald said. “And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my God, we didn’t cheat.’ He thought it was a Michigan thing, or we had a plant and the whole thing.
“So we had to counter with him to say, ‘Hey, look, if you come out with this, we’re going to sue you, because it’s not true.’
“He backed down, but he was killing John, our GM,” Macdonald added.
In the end, Payton backed down and, per Macdonald, was perfectly courteous when the two ran into one another in Indianapolis the following spring at the NFL Scouting Combine.
The Seahawks and Broncos meet in Week 6 on Thursday Night Football in Denver.
