Dianna Russini has once again become the talk of the NFL offseason after The New York Times published a lengthy article detailing her relationship with New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. Last week, The Athletic revealed that the investigation into Russini’s journalistic conduct was still ongoing.
2-Time Super Bowl Champion Backs Dianna Russini in Mike Vrabel Scandal
During Wednesday’s segment of the “Speakeasy” podcast, two-time Super Bowl champion LeSean McCoy pushed back on the allegations that Russini and Vrabel had an affair, citing a complete lack of evidence.
“I read what she said when she was resigning, and I think her integrity and her respect for her and her family is bigger than some money,” McCoy said. “That’s why she left, because they were dragging her family in it, her kids in it, and her husband in it — all because she wanted to hang out with a friend of hers. Ya’ll want to play, but there hasn’t been no true facts, for real. Some pictures that look [a certain way], a video that stopped and froze. I don’t do all that.
“I live in the gray area, and I know what’s really going on. The media loves negativity. The media wants to talk bad about you. They don’t want to say anything good about her [or] about him. So, they slow a video down. ‘Oh, look, they’re kissing!’ Unless I see a real video of him kissing her, of him grabbing her, of him doing something to her, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. Show me a picture of them kissing; you don’t see no lip-on-lip action.”
Former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, however, pushed back on what McCoy said about Russini.
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“Dianna Russini resigns saying like, ‘This is all a lie. This is all fabrication. Mike and I are just friends. We were there with six individuals. All of this is a lie.’ And The Athletic was like, ‘Well, Dianna, where were the six individuals? Just prove them. We can’t find them. Our investigation doesn’t turn up any six friends.'”
“Now, there are more pictures about you and Mike Vrabel,” Acho added. “There’s a playlist of you and Mike Vrabel. There’s a picture of you seven months pregnant on a boat with Mike Vrabel. You named your son Mike. There’s too much evidence and empirical data that’s going against you. So, that to me is why, like, she tried to play in everybody’s face. I feel bad because an $800,000 job is still an $800,000 job. And in theory, Mike Vrabel really faced no occupational consequences besides missing a day of work.”
Details about Russini and Vrabel’s relationship have gradually leaked after Page Six published the first pictures of the pair holding hands at an adults-only resort in Arizona in early April.
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Outlets later published additional pictures of them allegedly kissing at a New York bar in 2020 and of them together on a boating trip in Tennessee in 2021, when Vrabel was still the Tennessee Titans head coach and Russini was pregnant with her first child.
After Russini resigned from The Athletic in April, Vrabel revealed that he and his family would attend therapy to address the issue, and he missed Day 3 of the 2026 NFL Draft as a result.
While Vrabel hasn’t confirmed an affair with Russini, he did admit to having some difficult conversations with his family and made cryptic comments about how his “previous actions don’t meet the standard that I hold myself to.”
According to The New York Times’ report published on Wednesday, Russini, whose contract was up for renewal in June, earned a massive $800,000 salary before she resigned a week after the first pictures were published.
