When studying the consequences of the still-new business partnership between ESPN and the NFL (which as of April 1 owns 10 percent of ESPN), it’s important to consider not only the content of any journalism with which The Shield may take issue but also the manner in which it is presented.
Will it be showcased? Will it be downplayed? Will the authors of the article run through the full ESPN studio-show car wash? Or will it be given short, if any, shrift on the main network?
As it relates to the latest journalistic offering from ESPN — an article from Ben Strauss and Kalyn Kahler about Patriots coach Mike Vrabel’s unique offseason — the timing of the publication is encouraging. It wasn’t buried into the late-afternoon hours of the Friday of Labor Day weekend. It showed up on Monday morning, two days before the Patriots start the season with a Super Bowl LX rematch in Seattle.
The story delves into the prevailing mindset within the Patriots organization: Move on. That’s what they’ve done, and that’s what they’re still doing. They declined to make Vrabel available for the story, which likely prompted Kahler’s recent press-conference appearance and question about lessons learned from counseling. Which sparked an extended filibuster that landed the plane with commentary on offensive line play.
The Patriots also declined to comment on any of the reporting in the story. That said, they made two players available: running back Rhamondre Stevenson and safety Kevin Byard.
“We just tried to move on as fast as we can from that,” Stevenson said regarding the scandal that emerged in April, when the New York Post released the first set of photos showing Vrabel with Dianna Russini, who was serving at the time as the Senior NFL Insider for The Athletic.
The story contains some intriguing nuggets. Vrabel’s initial comment to the Post, in which he downplayed the images as showing a “completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable,” was going to be even stronger. Vrabel wanted to defend Russini’s reporting. This underscores past reporting that, before Russini told the Post about the images, she coordinated her response with Vrabel.
The story quickly took on a life of its own, with more images and at least one video fueling an about-face from Vrabel. After the Post published images of Vrabel and Russini at a New York City bar in March 2020, Vrabel stepped away from the third day of the NFL draft to attend counseling with his family.
Through it all, Russini has done nothing to soften her own strong denial, which included a resignation letter that blamed the media for speculation that was “simply unmoored from the facts.” By the time a video surfaced of a very pregnant Russini and Vrabel waiting for a boat to be unmoored, her version had been undermined — to say the least.
But while Russini walked away from her reported $800,000 per year job and disappeared from view (for now), Vrabel persisted. And the organization rallied around him. He has suffered no professional consequence, prompting many to still point to an obvious double standard.
The players have had no issue with the situation. As former Vrabel teammate Shaun Smith told ESPN, “Some guys are gonna be like, ‘Hey, he’s a dirtbag like me.’ You might have some guys who want to high-five him.”
Said Byard, who played for Vrabel in Tennessee before joining him in New England: “We all fall short sometimes; that’s what makes us human. I’m not going to question a guy’s choices . . . as long as they don’t affect things on the field, and I haven’t seen that.”
The story also explores the impact of the ordeal on other coaches and other female reporters, delving into Vrabel’s habit of giving the first question at each press conference to Teresa Walker in Nashville and, more recently, to Karen Guregian in New England.
“This is a tough business I think for females, for women, just trying to break in,” Vrabel told ESPN in 2025. “Then I get to Tennessee just trying to get to know everyone and there’s Teresa, she’s plugging away, and she’s always right there in the front row, super attentive, so I figured just out of respect for her, give her the first question and it kinda stuck.”
The Russini-Vrabel situation has become a different kind of sticking point beyond their orbit. As an unnamed assistant coach with another team told ESPN, “All the coaches are under surveillance right now, all the shit with Vrabel.”
Said another unnamed assistant coach to ESPN: “It’s the insinuation; you gotta watch yourself because players, coaches, people are looking at you, like ‘Are you in a relationship?’ . . . That is the trickle-down effect. Just imagine you’ve been working all day, 14, 16 hours, and you get to come home and your wife says, ‘Hey, did you see this?’ . . . It creates the perception of, ‘OK, this is what coaches are doing when we’re out of town or playing away games.’”
Hovering over the entire situation is the point raised last month by Mike Tomlin, in his first pregame appearance on NBC. His quote appears near the bottom of the ESPN story: “When games start, winning matters. And so if they get off to a fast start, they’ve got a chance to quiet some of that noise. If they don’t, that noise could get extremely loud.”
The 2026 schedule isn’t as conducive to winning as last year’s was. It starts like this: at Seahawks, vs. Steelers (whose quarterback had some things to say last month about ESPN’s handling of the Russini-Vrabel story), at Jaguars, at Bills. A 1-3 start isn’t out of the question.
And if that’s how it unfolds, the noise could indeed get extremely loud.
The one wild card that continues to hide somewhere in the deck relates to Russini. She seems to be planning a comeback, potentially as soon as this week. Possibly as soon as tomorrow. One day before the Patriots play in Seattle.
If she deviates from her prior position that the whole thing is a nothing burger, what will she say? And what, if any, questions will it spark for Vrabel, who may find himself once again talking about anything else in response before buttoning it with a comment about offensive line play?