Dianna Russini was again in the spotlight after a bombshell report Wednesday, published by The New York Times.
Now, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio has flagged a detail buried in that Times piece that hasn’t received nearly enough attention.
Mike Florio Questions Dianna Russini’s Julio Jones Trade Reporting
It revolves around the 2021 trade involving wide receiver Julio Jones, who moved from the Atlanta Falcons to the Tennessee Titans. Vrabel was Tennessee’s head coach at that point.
Florio argued the Times article ‘glosses over’ the Jones trade reporting, and separately called the question of what the Times and The Athletic knew about the Russini–Vrabel connection before hiring her ‘one of the most overlooked aspects of the story.’
“In June 2021, after breaking the story that the Atlanta Falcons had traded the wide receiver Julio Jones to the Tennessee Titans, she went on television and told a story about receiving a sign while gambling at a bachelorette party in Atlantic City. ‘I’m at the roulette table on Saturday night around 11 p.m.,’ she said on ‘Get Up,’ ESPN’s weekday morning show, ‘and I hit on black 11,'” the Times article revealed.
“Aware that Mr. Jones wore No. 11 for Atlanta, Ms. Russini recalled telling someone else in their party: ‘That’s Julio. Something’s up.’ She called her sources and confirmed her hunch. ‘I’m a witch,’ Ms. Russini said.”
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The concern, however, runs deeper than the vivid storytelling.
On May 27, 2021, Russini filed a report on the Falcons. She wrote that Atlanta had “discussed several offers for wide receiver Julio Jones, including an offer of a future first-round draft pick.”
As Florio noted, that framing left a clear impression that the Falcons already had a first-round offer in hand. She also labeled the Titans’ odds of landing Jones as a “long shot” at the time.
What actually happened, though, told a different story. Jones, along with a sixth-round pick, headed to Tennessee in exchange for a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick.
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That represents a significant step down from the first-round value Atlanta supposedly already held.
For Florio, that gap raises real questions about the reporting surrounding this deal, given Russini’s connection to Vrabel. In March 2020, Russini and Vrabel were together at a Manhattan bar.
Florio explained teams interested in Jones but unwilling to part with a first-round pick may have simply stepped aside.
If those teams pulled back from contacting Atlanta, Tennessee faced far less competition for Jones. The “long shot” framing also served a purpose. By publicly downplaying the Titans’ chances, the report may have given the organization room to negotiate away from the spotlight.
Those irregularities drew a sharp response from Ethan Strauss, a former NBA writer at The Athletic.
“The implication is clear: This woman was never a real journalist in the manner we are real journalists,” Strauss wrote, laying out his interpretation of what the Times’ piece exposed about Russini.
“Russini, a well-compensated middlebrow act with loose ethics, is an affront not just to their preferred standards but also to their very identity as journalists. They hate that some people might categorize a person like this as sharing the same profession.”
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That criticism points to a bigger question. Between 2020 and 2026, Russini produced hundreds of reports. Given what the Jones trade has surfaced, other stories from that period could face the same level of scrutiny going forward.
