Sean Payton says the beef with Mike Macdonald is over.
With the Denver Broncos set to host the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football, Payton made it clear Tuesday that the tension sparked by the viral training-camp footage clip is no longer hanging over the matchup. The Broncos and Seahawks both enter Week 6 at 3-2, but the storyline from the sidelines is the old dispute between the two head coaches.
DNVR Sports’ Zac Stevens shared Payton’s comments on X, formerly Twitter, and the Denver coach kept it simple when asked about where things stand.
“But Mike and I visited, and yeah, that that so many other things on your radar. Right.
You know that he was getting ready to play game. We were getting ready to play a game, and yeah, it's all good.”
The issue dates back to the 2024 season opener, when Seattle’s staff looked at roughly 100 Broncos training-camp plays that had been posted by fans on social media. Macdonald later brought the episode back into the spotlight during an interview with Graham Bensinger that spread quickly online in September.
Sean Payton said it’s “all good” with he and Mike MacDonald pic.twitter.com/5MReY5nTb6
— Zac Stevens (@ZacStevens) October 13, 2026
In that interview, Macdonald said Payton reached out to Seahawks general manager John Schneider to raise concerns about how Seattle obtained the footage. Macdonald also said Payton threatened to publicly accuse the Seahawks of cheating, while Seattle answered with the possibility of legal action. Macdonald maintained that his staff only used public videos and did nothing outside NFL rules.
The disagreement never spilled fully into public view at the time. Both sides backed off, and Seattle handled the rest on the field with a 26-20 win in Macdonald’s first game as head coach.
After the clip went viral, Macdonald said he never intended for those remarks to become public and apologized to Payton. Payton accepted that apology in September and said Denver updated its training-camp video policies after looking over what fans had shared.
So when the teams meet Thursday at Empower Field at Mile High, the message from Payton is that this is not a grudge game. The matter, at least from his side, is settled.
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