The New England Patriots’ locker room has thrown its support behind head coach Mike Vrabel after offseason allegations linking him to an extramarital affair with NFL reporter Dianna Russini.
‘It’s difficult to explain to people outside the building how he approached it and how players took it,’ a Patriots player, speaking anonymously, told ESPN. ‘Of course players care about [what happened]. Vrabel is a great leader. Sometimes you have to mess up to become an even better leader.’
Allegations of an extramarital affair between the NFL’s reigning Coach of the Year and The Athletic’s Russini first surfaced in April when she and Vrabel were pictured by The New York Post fraternizing by the pool of an adults-only Arizona retreat. Other years-old photos later surfaced showing the two gambling at a casino, renting a boat together in Tennessee and kissing at a Manhattan bar.
Vrabel and Russini both initially denied wrongdoing after the first photos surfaced, but ESPN reported that the Patriots coach wanted to release a more forceful statement defending her journalism at The Athletic.
Ultimately, Vrabel issued a more general acknowledgment that he had let down his family, without detailing any specific conduct. Russini later resigned, though she stood by her reporting at the New York Times-owned outlet, where editors have acknowledged that she fell short of newsroom standards.
ESPN’s report set out to examine how the controversy reverberated inside the Patriots’ facility, painting a picture of a team that has largely closed ranks around its coach.
ESPN reported that the New England Patriots locker room has rallied behind head coach Mike Vrabel following offseason accusations of an extramarital affair
Dianna Russini covered Vrabel during his coaching stints with the Titans and Patriots
People present when Vrabel addressed the matter with players last spring told ESPN that he accepted responsibility for creating a distraction and spoke to the team about the need to push through adversity.
Vrabel declined to speak with ESPN for the piece and much of the organization followed suit. However, a few players did speak to ESPN on and off the record to give a clearer picture of the fallout in Foxborough.
‘He feels like he did wrong by us,’ veteran running back Rhamondre Stevenson said.
Vrabel did not discuss specific details of the scandal with the team, five people in the room confirmed to ESPN, and according to Stevenson, nobody cared.
‘None of the team was really even worried about specifics,’ Stevenson said.
If anything, the article shows an NFL locker room to be a rather forgiving place.
‘His leadership was never tied to how he lived his personal life,’ one Patriots source told ESPN, explaining things would have been different if Vrabel was known to moralize publicly.
‘Ultimately football players care about respect, they care about accountability, and they care if you can make them better,’ that source told ESPN. ‘And if you can do those things, you can be the weirdest person or you can be a stone-cold killer and they won’t care.’
Rhamondre Stevenson stressed that the details of the scandal don’t concern his teammates
Shaun Smith, one of Vrabel’s former teammates from his playing days, had a similar, albeit more playful take: ‘Some guys are gonna be like, “Hey, he’s a dirtbag like me.” You might have some guys who want to high-five him.’
But the vast majority of those who spoke to ESPN about Vrabel’s redemption in New England seemed to think it would take care of itself.
Players aren’t asking coaches to be perfect, free-agent acquisition Kevin Byard told ESPN. Rather, they’re looking for coaches who are invested in their long-term success and happiness.
‘We all fall short sometimes; that’s what makes us human,’ said Byard, who previously played for Vrabel in Tennessee. ‘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.’
What Byard and many others have seen is a coach who knows how to be human.
When Byard’s newborn son spent five months in the hospital in 2023, Vrabel called to check in repeatedly, even after the safety was traded to Philadelphia that season. And similarly, when then-Patriots linebacker Jahlani Tavai lost an unborn child as his partner fell into a coma, Vrabel called every day.
New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, center, talks with players on August 10
‘Players know how much he cares about them,’ former Tennessee Titans center Ben Jones told ESPN. ‘He builds relationships where a lot of coaches don’t.’
ESPN’s article also addressed the Vrabel-Russini scandal’s impact on female reporters in NFL locker rooms.
Several women media figures told ESPN their jobs have already been impacted. In one instance, ESPN reported, a female reporter was told by an NFL assistant coach he did not want to be seen meeting with her and specifically cited the Vrabel-Russini scandal to defend his reasoning.
League personnel reached out to one female reporter this past spring to warn her that women in the media could have a harder time at events like the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis, she told ESPN. Typically, the early-March event offers league reporters the chance to fraternize with coaches and executives at the city’s bars.
‘It really sucks this [scandal] came from someone [Vrabel] who a lot of us thought approached things differently than his peers,’ one NFL reporter told ESPN. ‘It’s just unfortunate because it felt like he understood there are challenges that women in the business face and was doing one small bit to try and push back on it.’
