Vrabel to miss Day 3 of draft for counseling
Mike Florio unpacks the latest in the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini situation in the wake of a new batch of photos emerging in the New York Post and discusses Vrabel missing the third day of the draft to seek counseling.
Video Transcript
Universities throughout the country will eventually be studying the manner in which the New England Patriots, Mike Vrabel, and Diana Russini handled the ongoing 16-day-old scandal from a PR standpoint.
In many respects, it has been a disaster going all the way back to the initial responses that were provided by Vrabel, Russini, and her former employer, The Athletic, which arguably had the most strident comments right out of the gates.
Now, Vrabel, for his part, called the photos taken at an adults-only resort in Sedona, Arizona, laughable, deserves no further response.
That did not take the air out of this one.
And for something to still be hanging around 16 days later and intensifying, that's unheard of.
But there have been developments and developments and developments.
And it started with The Athletic realizing that they'd have to investigate.
That they started the investigation.
And while the investigation was ongoing, that's when Diana Russini resigned.
And that put a broader light on Mike Vrabel, who had been unscathed.
And I think it started to ratchet up some pressure there.
And then Vrabel, who had said nothing, who wasn't available for the pre-draft press conference, he makes the surprise appearance on Tuesday in the New England Patriots press room.
And even though he didn't make any direct admission, it was clear from the context and some of the specific words he used that this was not the nothing burger that they insisted from the get-go and that Russini, in her resignation letter, doubled down on.
So more developments happen.
And I think the outlets that specialize in tracking down these types of photographs and related evidence, the New York Post, now the TMZ story from today, and they had passed reportedly on the photos when they were first being shopped for four figures.
If the Post paid four figures for those photos, it was money well spent.
TMZ now has a photo of the two of them together at a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.
The photo itself seems innocuous, but the reporting along with it seems consistent with the photos from the Post, the many photos from March 11, 2020 that the Post reported on Thursday, which only added more oxygen to this.
And of course, Vrabel's statement from late Wednesday, early Thursday, that he's going to skip the third day of the draft to attend counseling.
It just kept going and going and going.
So I thought it was unusual and curious when Vrabel announced that he'd be meeting with reporters roughly an hour before the start of the 2026 draft.
What's the point at this point?
And I think the whole goal was to just press pause on everything and let the draft play out.
I don't know how necessary it was.
And when you look at what he said, it wasn't really anything new.
He was asked the question of how he went from saying the photos were laughable to the statements he's now making.
He said he was merely protecting his family.
But still, it's important to reside within the guardrails of the truth.
And when that's your public statement, if you have any reason to know it's going to get worse, just don't say anything.
That protects your family and you by not saying something that's going to be contradicted by further facts.
And that's one of the things that for me is still out there.
What did he say to the Patriots?
Were the Patriots on board with his idea that, well, this isn't really laughable.
This isn't really a nothing burger.
But we'll just say that to protect Vrabel's family and hope it goes away.
I don't know.
Or did Vrabel tell the Patriots something that wasn't true under the guise of protecting his family?
But ESPN reported last week in some of the only reporting they've done on it, which wasn't nearly as showcased as it could have been, Ben Strauss reported that Vrabel and Versini coordinated when it came to their initial response, that she had retained a crisis communications expert.
Why do you need that if you're operating within the realm of the truth?
And now we see where it stands.
In the latest development, Versini deletes her Twitter account.
That's a pretty big deal for an NFL insider who's breaking news in real time.
Twitter is such a critical tool.
It can always come back, but the idea that it's gone, that's a tangible action that I think says plenty in the aftermath of her initial denial and then the doubling down that was in a fairly strident and accusatory resignation letter that blamed the whole thing on the media.
People in the media turning this into something that it isn't.
Unmoored from the facts was the line that she used.
So I don't know where this is going to go from here.
It's open season.
Anybody who's got photos is going to be trying to sell them to TMZ, New York Post, anyone else out there.
There will be an effort, I believe, because these publications understand that there's a financial incentive to keep this thing going because people can't get enough of it.
It has, in a very slow motion, methodical way, become a story that cannot be ignored.
A lot of people ignored it early on, citing all sorts of reasons why or citing no reasons at all.
It's now something that cannot be ignored.
It is a major distraction for the Patriots.
It is taking Vrabel out of the draft room as they make their draft picks on the third day of the draft.
And with him saying he's prioritizing his family moving forward, what does that mean about work days coming up after the draft ends?
Will he be taking short leave of absence?
Will he be missing days from time to time?
We don't know.
We don't know.
But we know this.
It started as one thing, and it has grown into something that I don't think anyone could have expected.
And we'll see where it goes from here, and we'll see, culminating in week one and beyond, what, if any, dotted line there is between this major distraction that Mike Vrabel is directly responsible for, how it impacts the performance of the Patriots, and whether or not this is something that, with the passage of time, will just, as everything seems to do, it will just kind of die down.
But that's what happens with the stories that bubble up and disappear in a day or two.
This thing's been around for a long time, and there's no sign it's going away, and there are new developments all the time.
So we just sit back, and we watch, and we wait for further developments, and we react to them as they happen.
But for now, the draft is going to take center stage for the next few days.
If this thing is still generating headlines after the draft, it may keep generating headlines for multiple weeks to come.
