Photos published Tuesday evening by the New York Post showed Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel together at a Sedona resort, including one image with their fingers interlocked and another of the two hugging. Other pictures showed them by the hotel pool, while the Post’s headline described them as holding hands and hugging at a luxury hotel.
Russini told the Post reporter on Easter Sunday that she and Vrabel recently had been in Arizona for NFL league meetings, but the images were reported to have been taken away from those meetings at a luxury resort. The Post then published the photos two days later, as Russini resigned from The Athletic amid an internal investigation into her relationship with Vrabel, her NFL coverage and whether she had lied to the company about the meeting with him.
Vrabel continues to coach the New England Patriots and is preparing for next week's NFL draft, while the NFL said it is not reviewing him under its personal conduct policy. The league’s spokesman, Brian McCarthy, said the policy covers conduct detrimental to the integrity and public confidence in the National Football League, but the NFL has not opened such a review in Vrabel’s case.
The Athletic, owned by, had been examining Russini’s relationship with Vrabel, her reporting and whether she misled the company, according to the facts provided. On Sunday, Russini also consulted with a crisis communications expert and later appealed directly to Meredith Kopit Levien, while coordinating with Vrabel about how to respond to the Post. The scrutiny is sharpened by one detail that does not fit neatly with the public denials: Russini and Vrabel are both married to other people.
What comes next now turns on what, if anything, the Patriots decide to do after a spokesman declined to say whether the team would review Vrabel’s relationship with Russini. For Russini, the damage has already arrived; for Vrabel, the silence from the team leaves the biggest unanswered question inside the building, not outside it.
