Dianna Russini’s latest controversy reignited after a New Jersey traffic stop was caught on bodycam, showing her using a Vikings-related phone exchange to get out of a ticket—then repeating a different story on radio and in a recent New York Times piece.
Dianna Russini walked into another kind of spotlight this week, one that didn’t come with a mic and a question—just a police officer at her driver’s window in New Jersey.
The former NFL reporter for The Athletic was pulled over in January for using her phone while driving. In a bodycam clip posted Monday on X by Adam Herbets of Center Square. the traffic stop is played out in close detail. down to the conversational detours that ended with Russini trying to slip out of the ticket.
The officer asks for her license and registration. Russini introduces herself as an NFL journalist and says she just broke a story about Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott getting fired—adding that she was sending a tweet about it before she was stopped.
Then she turns the moment into personal banter, asking the officer if he’s a Giants or Jets fan. When he says he’s actually a Vikings fan. Russini pulls up a text exchange on her phone between herself and Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell. In the clip. that interaction is presented as the reason—enough for Russini to “weasel out of the traffic ticket. ” as described in the posting.
But the bodycam wasn’t the last word in the story. Russini’s version of what happened later began to crack.
In February, she appeared as a guest on the radio show “Stugotz and Company,” where she claimed she FaceTimed with O’Connell when she was stopped by the police officer. The bodycam footage contradicts that account.
The inconsistency didn’t stay confined to the radio. Her false claim was also repeated in an anecdote in a New York Times expose about her published just last week.
This wouldn’t be her first time colliding with major attention in the NFL media world. Russini was previously caught up in a scandal involving New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel in April. after photos surfaced of them hugging and holding hands at a resort in Sedona. Arizona. The New York Post also published photos of Russini and Vrabel kissing at an NYC bar in 2020. Both men and Russini were married to other people at the time.
Russini denied she was having an affair with Vrabel, but she resigned from her job at The Athletic amid the media frenzy. Vrabel said he would take accountability for the distraction the scandal caused his family, and he is now working on his marriage with his wife.
For Russini, this latest traffic-stop controversy is more than a messy roadside moment—it’s a new flashpoint built from the gap between what she said later and what the bodycam shows in the moment.
Dianna Russini bodycam traffic ticket New Jersey The Athletic Kevin O’Connell Stugotz and Company Sean McDermott Vikings Mike Vrabel Sedona scandal