As a famous fictitious news personality once said, “That escalated quickly.”
On Tuesday, Mike Macdonald drew arguably the most attention he’s ever received since becoming Seattle Seahawks head coach. A clip from his nearly two-hour interview with Graham Bensinger went viral on social media after he revealed that Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton accused the Seahawks of cheating, when in actuality they prepared for their 2024 opener against Denver by scouting plays filmed by Broncos fans at training camp. Macdonald said that the Seahawks had threatened to sue Payton if he went public with his accusations, and Payton eventually backed down.
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It’s a sensational story punctuated by Macdonald saying that Payton is “not my biggest fan.”
It also should’ve never made it to air, evidently.
Coach Macdonald addressed the clip at his weekly Wednesday press conference, confirming that that portion of the interview was not meant to be public record.
“It’s something that I didn’t intend for public use,” Macdonald said. “Thought it was the most appropriate thing to reach out to Sean and apologize to him for having that end up be public, where it wasn’t meant to. Something that they have to deal with in real-time that wasn’t on their end, that’s where you’re like, ‘Crap.’ It’s a lesson learned. I have to be better in that moment for understanding like, ‘I’m responsible for what I say, no matter the circumstance.’ Whether you’re mic’d up, whether you’re not. Whether you have a certain type of understanding. I fell short in that moment, so it stings for me, but it’s something that I’m going to learn from. It’s a good example that we have to take responsibility for the things we say.”
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Macdonald indicated that he thought he was just having normal conversation with Bensinger before he thought the cameras were rolling. As far as whether or not the Bensinger production team reached out to him, he said, “It’s not important on all those details. It got out.”
The story, of course, doesn’t end here.
According to PFT’s Mike Florio, the Seahawks “didn’t even know that portion of the ‘more off than on”‘ the record discussion had been recorded until Tuesday morning,” which is when the clip gained traction.
The original full-length interview was about 1 hour and 49 minutes, but later that Tuesday it was pulled from Bensinger’s Patreon and re-uploaded at a length of about 1 hour and 44 minutes, omitting the Macdonald-Payton segment.
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Bensinger, a longtime journalist who’s interviewed many famous athletes and celebrities, released a statement on Wednesday evening. In effect, Bensinger says he provided the video to the Seahawks Public Relations team last week, while stating that Macdonald reached him about the Payton portion of the interview on Tuesday.
Due to ongoing media requests for comment, I want to clarify the timeline surrounding a portion of our recent interview with Mike Macdonald that has received attention this week.
The complete Mike Macdonald interview, including the conversation now at issue, was provided to Seahawks PR last Wednesday, September 16 – five days before it was published on YouTube Monday. During that time, no concern was raised about the exchange, and we were never asked to remove it. For the last couple of years, our typical practice with long-form interview releases has been to include some of the pre-interview conversation.
Coach Macdonald reached out to me directly yesterday morning expressing concern. I immediately told him we would remove that portion, and we did. Unfortunately, it had already been clipped from our interview by online outlets and circulated elsewhere. I told Coach that, in hindsight, I regretted allowing that exchange to be included and that it was my error in judgment.
I have tremendous respect for Coach. We spent significant time together in Seattle, and I came away impressed not only by what he has accomplished in such a short period of time, but by the person he is. The last thing I want is for one exchange to overshadow that story. I also have great respect for Sean Payton, whom I had the opportunity to profile previously.
For an interview that, prior to its full release, was considered a fascinating look into Macdonald as a coach and a person, it has unfortunately veered into a considerable controversy within the journalism field.
By the way, Payton also had his own comments from his press conference prior to Broncos practice.
“[Mike] and I are good,” Payton said. “Lord knows, I’ve been in his position where you’re talking about something … and the story is three years ago. Now, I don’t know Mike at that time really, but I know [John Schneider] really well. And, so, I’m sure my initial call to John wasn’t pleasant, but I would say this, in talking with him, it allowed us to figure out how to handle our training camp relative to just videos.
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“And I don’t think anything was intentional by fans, you know what I mean? But at first, you’re kind of thinking, ‘Man, how could … ?’ And then we did some research online of what was available, and that’s kind of how we changed our policy.
“So obviously, I called shooting before I started looking,” Payton added with a laugh. “And I could only do that with John because, again, he’s someone I’ll have a beer with at the combine. I consider him a good friend.”
Just imagine if all of this had unfolded the same week the Seahawks and Broncos square off in Denver in Week 6…
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