Every new story that comes out about the alleged affair between Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini is somehow worse than the one before. It is truly astonishing that the inappropriate relationship between the NFL head coach and prominent league reporter did not come to light before this year.
If the most recent report from February is true, they were not subtle.
There are a lot of questions that remain unanswered about this latest NFL scandal. Knowledge is power.
Who knew what about Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini?
It is no longer a secret that Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel are more than friends. We don’t know exactly who was doing what with who or when, but they were both spotted together in remote locations on multiple different occasions over the last six years. Their alleged affair dates back to at least 2020.
The head coach of the New England Patriots initially tried to play the whole thing off as much ado about nothing. As did the National Football League insider. They claimed they were just friends. No big deal.
It did not take long for that story to unravel. Russini resigned from her role with The Athletic and Vrabel entered into a family counseling program on the third day of the NFL Draft.
Those are not things you do if you are innocent. This does not seem to be a situation where two completely platonic friends interlocked fingers at an adults-only resort in Arizona just for the giggles.
New photos of Russini and Vrabel show them kissing six years before the scandal was made public. They also spent time together at a casino in Mississippi right after he was fired by the Titans in 2024.
People of such high status don’t go to Biloxi unless they are trying to keep a low profile. You go to Vegas.
All of this goes to say that the optics are horrible. Russini’s access to Vrabel during the pandemic raises questions about ESPN’s knowledge of the situation. Her deleted post about Morgan Moses raises illegal tampering concerns. The whole thing is weird. How did nobody know?
An NFL witness claims there was a booty slap.
Tony Farmer has been all over this alleged affair from the jump. I do not know him personally but the San Francisco 49ers beat reporter and sports betting analyst boasts more than 15,000 followers on social media and holds bylines on SI.com, the Norwich Bulletin and the Muncie Star Press.
I don’t know if he’s as credible as someone like Tom Pelissero or Adam Schefter but he’s not nobody. And he knows a lot of people in the industry who report on the greater National Football League beat.
Therefore, I tend to believe his latest report about Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel. Farmer knows somebody who claims he or she saw something weird at the NFL Scouting Combine. The question is whether or not that “somebody” is telling the truth. The eyewitness account dates back to February, just a few weeks after the Patriots lost the Super Bowl, about six weeks prior to the Arizona photos leak.
“An NFL employee said they saw Dianna Russini sitting on Mike Vrabel’s lap at Coaches Tavern in Indianapolis during the week of February 23. According to the witness, at one point Russini stood up and Vrabel gave her a ‘friendly little slap’ on her buttocks.”
— Tony Farmer (@Tonysmarkettips/X)
The source explained:
“(NFL) coaches have realized that Prime (the Steakhouse across the street from Coaches Tavern) has become a popular spot for journalists to hang out and so Coaches has become a spot to let their hair down.”
— Anonymous source, via Tony Farmer
If this is true, and Russini really did sit on Vrabel’s lap in public and Vrabel really did slap Russini’s cheeks, it gives credibility to the idea that this was not a well-kept secret amongst the league. Did nobody think that was weird? Why did the eyewitness hold this information until right now? Is it because people did not think anything of it until the photos dropped? Weird, sure, but not newsworthy?
This is one of the most bizarre scandals in NFL history and every new story is worse than the last. It really begs the question of who knew this was happening but chose to keep their mouths shut.