Sean Payton, After Wrongly Accusing Mike Macdonald Of Cheating, Is Somehow The Only One Not Groveling

The NFL schedule is not likely to renew the fading historical rivalry between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks. The two teams are now separated by the conference divide, and, though both teams are currently good, you'd be a fool to bet on the Super Bowl producing any particular matchup, especially one featuring Bo Nix's ass. But though proximity cannot suffice, the rivalry was juiced up this week by an out-of-nowhere controversy involving the teams' head coaches and some shit that went down behind the scenes two years ago. Mike Macdonald took over as head coach of the Seahawks in January 2024. Months later, in the run-up to the season, Macdonald prepared his team for a Week 1 matchup with the Broncos in part by finding and reviewing fan footage of Denver's training camp. Macdonald, recounting this episode in a sit-down interview for the widely syndicated In Depth with Graham Bensinger, says that his Seahawks cobbled together roughly 100 clips; they then went out and beat the Broncos, 26–20, ruining Nix's regular-season debut. You are allowed whatever feelings about this. To Macdonald, if the Broncos permitted filming, and the videos were swirling around on social media, then this was legitimate scouting. The Seahawks, under Macdonald, do not permit filming at training camp: Per a "Know Before You Go" page on the team's website, an announcement at the end of the "Team Stretch" portion of each session will direct fans to "refrain from taking photos and videos of the practice field." I'm not sure how or how closely this is policed, but the Seahawks Fan Code of Conduct warns that "staff will proactively intervene" when fans fail "to follow instructions of stadium personnel," up to and including ejection and "permanent revocation of ticket privileges." It's not that Macdonald feels that every team should have video of every other team's training camp. It's that he views managing that as the responsibility of Seattle's opponents: If you don't want fan videos to become scouting tools, simply do not permit fans to take videos.

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