Mike Macdonald Reveals 2024 Broncos' Cheating Claim Against Seahawks Nearly Led to Lawsuit

Last season almost ended with the Denver Broncos facing the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl , and if that game would have happened, there likely would have been some serious drama, because it seems the two head coaches don't like each other very much.

Just ask Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald about that.

"He's not my biggest fan," Macdonald recently said of Broncos' coach Sean Payton.

During a recent interview with Graham Bensinger , Macdonald spilled the details on a wild story from 2024 involving Payton.

In his first game ever as a head coach, Macdonald led his team to a 26-20 road win over the Broncos to open the 2024 season. During the game, the Seahawks' defense seemed to always be one step ahead of Denver's offense: They forced three turnovers while holding the Broncos to just 231 yards.

Since it was Week 1, Macdonald didn't have a lot of film on the Broncos, so he decided to turn to Twitter to see if he could find some plays they might use.

"Fans will tape and post plays from training camp on Twitter, so it's public knowledge, so we took like a 100 plays from their training camp," Macdonald said. "We're scouting them."

At some point after the game was played, Payton somehow found out about the Seahawks' social media scouting session and he was NOT happy.

"He got wind of it and he lost it," Macdonald said.

Broncos threatened to go to the NFL

Payton was so upset with what Seattle did that he threated to turn them into the NFL . It got so serious that Payton actually reached out to Seahawks general manger John Schneider.

"So he called John and he basically threatened to come out publicly and do a whole Patriot, like Spygate type of thing," Macdonald said. "And I'm sitting there like, 'Oh my God, we didn't cheat.' He thought it was a Michigan thing where we had a plant."

So it appears that Payton thought the Seahawks may have actually sent someone to Broncos' training camp, which would be illegal, but Macdonald says all the plays came from Twitter, which wouldn't violate any NFL rules. The Seahawks were so sure that they didn't break any rules that they threatened to SUE Payton if he reached out to the league.

"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,'" Macdonald said. "So he backed down, but he was killing John, our GM."

None of this ever leaked out and the reason for that is because Payton eventually put it behind him.

"So the season ends and he let it go," Macdonald said.

Fallout for the Broncos

Payton might have let it go, but the Seahawks' strategy appears to have led to a major change at Broncos training camp. It is now prohibited for fans to take video at any of Denver's training camp practices. During their 2026 camp, the Broncos posted signs all around the facility so that fans knew they could be kicked out if they were excessively breaking the rules.

> These signs greet #Broncos fans at training camp. A security official said the great majority of fans are following rules. The official said fans can get a warning initially and nobody is in jeopardy of being evicted unless actions “excessive.” Nobody was said to be tossed Friday pic.twitter.com/cswT91vnvk — Chris Tomasson (@christomasson) July 31, 2026

Allowing fans and media to film plays at training camp has become a touchy issue around the NFL. Some teams permit it, but most of them are like the Broncos and have rules against it.

Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley was in a similar situation last season when he was the defensive coordinator for the Packers . At the time, Kevin Patullo, who is now a Dolphins assistant, was the Eagles offensive coordinator and Philadelphia scouted the Packers by using a training camp play they spotted on social media.

"We had a pressure I had never run, so there's no way he could've known about it," Hafley said earlier this month . "And they knew it was coming. (Kevin) said they saw it on video."

With the Payton-Macdonald feud now going public, teams may decide to revisit their social media policies when it comes to fans at training camp.

For Macdonald, scouting plays on Twitter ended up working out, which isn't a huge surprise, because most things seem to end up working out for him. The Seahawks head coach won a Lombardi Trophy last season in just his second year on the job. The Seahawks beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LX and they came close to facing the Broncos: Denver came up just one game short of getting to the Super Bowl with a loss in the AFC title game.

Add CBS Sports on Google Join the Conversation comments

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/broncos-cheating-accusation-seahawks-mike-macdonald/)._