Sports

Seahawks' Mike Macdonald apologizes to Broncos' Sean Payton after spying accusation goes public

Nairavoice · Sep 24, 2026 · 2 min read

Seahawks’ Mike Macdonald apologizes to Broncos’ Sean Payton after spying accusation goes public originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The Seattle Seahawks are playing exactly the way they should be after coming off a Super Bowl win in February. It was unclear if they would be able to maintain the same level of success as last season, but they have done just that.

The Seahawks lost Sam Darnold on the first drive of the year. After their 2-0 start, it seems like Darnold is close to a return.

“Darnold could return to practice sometime this week, and after the Seahawks improved to 2-0 with a 31-7 win over the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium, Macdonald didn’t rule out Seattle’s QB1 possibly playing next Sunday against the Washington Commanders(0-2),” ESPN’s Brady Henderson wrote.

However, the limelight has been all over Mike Macdonald these past couple of days. On Tuesday, it was leaked that Macdonald said Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton was going to accuse Seattle of cheating in 2024.

“He’s not my biggest fan,” Macdonald said of Payton. So we play them (Broncos) in our first game. So 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… He got wind of it, and he lost it.”

That is a pretty big accusation from Payton, and it was pretty crazy of Macdonald to even tell Graham BenSinger that information. Macdonald was quick to respond, letting the media know on Wednesday that he has since apologized to Payton.

“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,” Macdonald said.

This entire situation for Macdonald is unfortunate, as the dialogue about this specific topic was meant to be kept under wraps. It was not, and for that reason, there is now a big distraction surrounding the Seahawks.

The head coach did the right thing by immediately apologizing to Payton. It was a crazy accusation from the veteran head coach in Denver, but this entire situation is one that has left everyone saying, “wow.”