FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Mike Vrabel, the hulking former linebacker who coached his team to the Super Bowl last season, had assumed his news conference power stance: arms stretched wide to grab the lectern in front of him. It was a morning in August ahead of New England Patriots training camp practice. The head coach wore his trademark blue vest and white long-sleeved shirt.
“What did you learn from counseling?” a reporter asked.
Vrabel dodged the question about the scandal that rocked the NFL offseason. Instead, he turned his answer into a discussion about New England’s offensive line: “I just walked into that meeting room and said, ‘How do we improve? How do we improve our combination blocks?”
He spoke for one minute and six seconds. He never mentioned the word counseling.
Vrabel was the feel-good story of last NFL season as he led the Patriots from 4-13 to the Super Bowl in his first year coaching his former team.
But after the New York Post in April published photos of him and former Athletic NFL reporter Dianna Russini together at an adults-only resort, he became a fascination beyond just sports media, crossing over into the tabloids. The attention grew so intense that Vrabel stepped away from the team to seek counseling. Vrabel’s future was debated across sports media. NFL observers and personnel wondered aloud if the scrutiny on his personal life would grow into a problem on the field.
As a new season of Super Bowl expectations begins, Vrabel’s close connection to players and his track record of success have allowed him to move beyond the offseason scandal in the locker room and organization. At the same time, aftershocks continue to ripple through the league, from team front offices to the coaching ranks, in some cases changing how men who work in the league interact with women who report on it.
ESPN spoke with league insiders, reporters, players and coaches, most of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity, about the Patriots’ offseason and how the Vrabel-Russini situation impacted the league.
One woman who covers the NFL said that an assistant coach said he wouldn’t want to be seen meeting with her because of the optics after the Vrabel scandal. Several women reporters and coaches told ESPN they are more cautious now when interacting with each other because they feel more closely watched. They worry about the league’s annual scouting combine in March, an event defined by late-night intermingling between team personnel and reporters at bars that helps define coverage for fans.
The Patriots declined to make Vrabel available for an interview and declined to comment for this story. In New England, multiple Patriots personnel and players followed Vrabel’s lead, declining requests to discuss how they navigated the offseason, and those who did talk shared few details. The team offered two players -- running back Rhamondre Stevenson and safety Kevin Byard -- to speak to ESPN. “We just tried to move on as fast as we can from that,” Stevenson said.
At training camp, a group of players’ and coaches’ wives and girlfriends were watching practice when ESPN approached one coach’s wife to discuss the strange offseason. “I love chatting,” she said, “if it were any other topic.”
“We love this team, and the Pats stick together,” she continued. “That’s all I’ll say.”
VRABEL RECEIVED A call from a New York Post reporter on Easter Sunday regarding the photos that showed him and Russini hugging and interlocking fingers at the resort, according to a person with knowledge of the call.
Vrabel told Page Six that the photos “show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable.” According to a person who spoke to Vrabel at the time, the head coach had wanted to issue a stronger statement that defended Russini’s reporting ethics but settled on downplaying the photos.
Russini resigned from The Athletic less than a week later. (The Athletic ultimately found that Russini’s relationship with Vrabel violated its newsroom standards but that her coverage did not show a clear bias. She declined to comment for this story.) When Vrabel met reporters for the first time on April 21, he seemed chastened as he told the assembled media he’d “had some difficult conversations” with people that he cared about. He decided to miss the third day of the NFL draft to seek counseling. It was around that time that one team source noticed Vrabel was quieter than normal and not walking around the facility greeting everyone he passed as he normally would.
The chaos continued over the following weeks as tabloids published more old photos of him together with Russini (they are both married to other people). Page Six even published photos of Vrabel in a Utah airport and reported about him and his wife having dinner. By the end of May, Vrabel held another news conference at offseason workouts and reiterated his devotion to her. “I love Jen,” he told reporters.
But if Vrabel appeared to be under siege, those inside the organization say the team had already moved on.
ABOUT TWO WEEKS after the Post published the first photos, Patriots players and coaches gathered for a regularly scheduled meeting, their first since February’s Super Bowl loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Some had followed the scandal and seen the photos.
Vrabel spoke in the same serious tone that he used when addressing the team after a loss, according to a Patriots source. Three players in the room said Vrabel told them he was responsible for creating a distraction and bringing negative attention to the team. He said that challenges always come, but what matters is how people handle adversity when it hits, the players said.
“He feels like he did wrong by us,” Stevenson said.
Vrabel shared no details about his relationship with Russini, nor did he explain what he’d done to cause the distraction he acknowledged, according to five people in the room. Players asked no questions, and Vrabel quickly moved on to explain the team’s schedule for the day before the team broke off into smaller meetings.
“None of the team was really even worried about specifics,” Stevenson said.
Another Patriots player reached by ESPN, who requested anonymity to speak freely, offered a different perspective: “It’s difficult to explain to people outside the building how he approached it and how players took it,” he said. “Of course players care about [what happened]. Vrabel is a great leader. Sometimes you have to mess up to become an even better leader.”
But simply addressing the distraction was enough accountability, four players said. “His leadership was never tied to how he lived his personal life,” said the Patriots source, who noted that things would be different if Vrabel were a pastor responsible for shepherding souls and exemplifying morality.
“Ultimately football players care about respect, they care about accountability, and they care if you can make them better,” the source said. “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.”
When players have off-the-field issues, a high-ranking executive for another NFL team told ESPN, team brass often discusses whether they should address the team. “And the answer is usually no. Players care about winning games and making money.”
Shaun Smith, a former defensive end who played with Vrabel in the NFL, suggested there could even be a newfound relatability to the coach: “Some guys are gonna be like, ‘Hey, he’s a dirtbag like me.’ You might have some guys who want to high-five him.”
When asked about Vrabel, players and colleagues spoke glowingly about both his coaching and his humanity. He sprints to the tunnel after every game to greet each player coming off the field. He also allows players the space to prioritize their families.
Byard played for Vrabel in Tennessee, and in 2023, his newborn son spent five months in the hospital. He said Vrabel called to check on him repeatedly, even after he was traded to Philadelphia halfway through the year.
Jahlani Tavai, a Patriots linebacker last year and now with the Jacksonville Jaguars, lost an unborn child last season and his partner fell into a coma. Vrabel called or checked on him every day, Tavai told ESPN. Stevenson called Vrabel a “father figure.”
Ben Jones, a former offensive lineman who played for Vrabel in Tennessee, told ESPN: “Players know how much he cares about them. He builds relationships where a lot of coaches don’t.”
The result, certainly helped by last year’s Super Bowl appearance, is a wealth of goodwill inside the locker room. As the tabloids circled, Byard called his coach, whom he also labels a friend, to offer support, he said. “I’m here for you if you need anything,” Byard said he told Vrabel. “... I don’t care what’s going on in the media.”
According to one person who has worked with Vrabel, the head coach has a question he likes to ask when evaluating a prospect with an off-the-field issue: Did the player make a bad choice, or are they a bad person?
“We all fall short sometimes; that’s what makes us human,” Byard said. “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.”
WHEN VRABEL TOOK the lectern during the August news conference, he looked toward the second row of seats filled by reporters and found veteran columnist Karen Guregian.
“How you doing?” Vrabel asked her, before Guregian asked the session’s first question about that day’s joint practice.
Vrabel begins nearly every media availability by giving the first question to a veteran woman reporter, a ritual he’s made a staple of his coaching career. Vrabel started the gesture in 2018 in Tennessee with Associated Press sportswriter Teresa Walker and has continued it with Guregian, who now works for MassLive, in New England.
“This is a tough business I think for females, for women, just trying to break in,” Vrabel told ESPN last year. “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.”
But several women reporters, from ESPN and other outlets, said that the Vrabel-Russini situation has impacted their jobs, which were already challenging because of their gender. One reporter said an assistant coach told her he would not want to be seen meeting her for a coffee, specifically citing the optics of the Vrabel-Russini situation.
Another reporter said that multiple NFL personnel reached out to her this past spring, warning her that women reporters will have a harder time at the scouting combine, an important source-building event where reporters and league stakeholders mingle, often late at night at bars. Another reporter said she is more proactive in telling her editor about meetings with team personnel in case photographs are ever taken. Four of the reporters said they feel like they have to be more cautious when meeting up with sources, texting them or asking for a phone number.
“It really sucks this came from someone who a lot of us thought approached things differently than his peers,” said one NFL reporter who has covered Vrabel. “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.”
During an off-camera media availability for Vrabel in April, Guregian, as usual, had the first question. She asked if he had any thoughts on Russini resigning. He declined to answer.
Guregian declined to comment for this story.
Multiple executives and communications staffers around the league said the Vrabel-Russini story was a major discussion inside other NFL clubs. Given the size of the media storm, one team executive said their front office studied Vrabel’s situation and discussed how they would respond if they faced a similar crisis. One former NFL club communications staffer said they would more strongly monitor where team staffers were meeting reporters.
One assistant coach from another NFL team told ESPN: “All the coaches are under surveillance right now, all the s--- with Vrabel.”
Another NFL assistant coach who does not work for New England said that he is more careful now when interacting with women colleagues and reporters. “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.”
In a statement to ESPN, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said, “We value the work of all credentialed media and are committed to providing fair and equal access for reporters covering the NFL.”
The NFL said in April that it was not going to investigate Vrabel under its personal conduct policy, and the Patriots declined to say whether Vrabel faced any internal punishment.
The Patriots have been the subject of tabloid attention before. In 2019, owner Robert Kraft was issued an arrest warrant tied to a visit to a massage parlor in Florida (the charges were ultimately dropped). Kraft, appearing on ESPN’s “First Take” in July, offered his full-throated support for Vrabel.
“We’re privileged to have Mike as our head coach,” Kraft said. “No one is infallible.”
The Patriots will begin their season Wednesday, hoping for a return trip to the Super Bowl. But league observers say the distraction from the offseason could reemerge unless the Patriots’ play makes it a nonissue.
“When games start, winning matters,” former Steelers coach turned NBC analyst Mike Tomlin said over the summer when asked how the Patriots would get past the offseason. “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.”
Nick “Fitzy” Stevens, a former host on Boston radio station WEEI, agreed, noting the Patriots’ tougher schedule this season. He imagined a Week 4 road date against the rival Buffalo Bills. “If the record is ugly and the Pats are trying to keep their head above water, you know there will be headlines,” he said. “Think about it: Pro Football Talk, Barstool. Think of the signs in Buffalo.”
He paused and added: “They better start hot.”
ESPN’s Kent Babb contributed reporting.
