June 8, 2026, 5:10 a.m. ET
- Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and former NFL reporter Dianna Russini denied any wrongdoing after photos of them together became public.
- Crisis management expert says Vrabel has not taken full public accountability for the situation.
- Vrabel stepped away from the final day of the NFL draft to prioritize his family, a move some experts viewed positively.
- Experts believe the controversy will continue to follow Vrabel until he is fully transparent about what happened.
The word that will continue to follow Mike Vrabel is one of his own choosing.
“Laughable.”
It’s a word he relayed via a statement in the immediate aftermath of controversial photos of himself and former NFL reporter Dianna Russini becoming public in April.
Now nearly two months later, Vrabel – the head coach of the New England Patriots fresh off a Super Bowl appearance – continues to frame the story, according to Molly McPherson, a crisis communications and strategy expert with more than 25 years of experience (and Patriots fan).
“Vrabel is running, in my opinion, a staged rehabilitation, albeit somewhat clumsily,” McPherson told USA TODAY Sports. “Everything he’s doing is sequenced to move from that initial denial in the beginning to where we are now.”
After the New York Post published photos on April 7 of Vrabel and Russini holding hands and hugging at a private Arizona resort prior to the annual league meetings in March, both Vrabel and Russini – who are married to other people and have two children each – vehemently denied any nefarious insinuation.
“These photos show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable,” Vrabel told the Post. “This doesn’t deserve any further response.”
But their excuses of being on separate trips that happened to be at the same place with other groups of people never panned out. The New York Post released more photos of the two April 23, which appeared to have been dated from March 2020. Additional photos, from a boat trip in Tennessee to time together in a Las Vegas casino, have also surfaced.
The controversy covers a sprawling set of issues: personal conduct, organizational ethics and media trust. At this point, McPherson said, achieving full accountability would require sitting down with a news outlet and a reporter and laying out the truth.
“Because he still hasn’t taken accountability,” McPherson said, “so people are still going to look for it.”
Has Mike Vrabel been accountable in Dianna Russini saga?
What McPherson has noticed during Vrabel’s attempts to explain himself in a trio of meetings with the media after the photos were first published is that he spoke without acknowledging exactly what happened during his interactions with Russini.
“I’ve had some difficult conversations with people I care about about − with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players,” Vrabel said April 21, two weeks after the New York Post published the photos.
“Those have been positive and productive. We believe in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me. That starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. You never want to be the cause of a distraction.
“What I can promise you is that my family, this organization, the team, the staff, the coaches, everybody − our fans, most importantly − will get the best version of me going forward.”
That statement and in his comments in subsequent meetings with the media, McPherson said, he has come up short in assuming full accountability.
“Accountability that only activates when you get caught isn’t accountability. And Mike Vrabel hasn’t taken any accountability,” said McPherson, whose than 600,000 followers watch her videos explaining and supplying insight about the latest high-profile PR crisis on TikTok. “He’s only spoken publicly about what he’s doing privately as a person.”
Mike Vrabel’s decision to step away from draft
Vrabel spent the final day of the 2026 NFL Draft away from the team and said he had to prioritize his family, a move that restored credibility to the 2025 Coach of the Year, according to Saint Mary’s (Canada) University psychology professor Dr. Maryanne Fisher.
Fisher, who specializes in evolutionary foundations of human interpersonal relationships, viewed Vrabel’s response from the Patriots’ fan point-of-view despite having never heard of Mike Vrabel until recently.
She said she would feel better about putting her faith in someone to lead an organization she is passionate about if the person had the maturity to acknowledge they weren’t at peak performance and step away, even during Day 3 of the NFL draft – an important day on the NFL calendar but something the Patriots could handle without his presence.
“I think it was a win-win,” said Fisher, who added he is backing up his words by saying, “‘my family is important and I’m doing this for my family.’
“I think admitting that there was a distractibility issue, but also what resonates, he’s giving an image or making statements about how much he’s concerned about his family.”
Patriots fans at an event for season-ticket holders greeted Vrabel with a standing ovation when he addressed a group in late April. He also received a hearty hello from fans at quarterback Drake Maye’s charity softball game a month later.
Mike Vrabel’s accountability to his family looks different than public
With Vrabel saying that he was beginning to seek counseling, Dr. Sheila Addison – a licensed family and marriage therapist – recommended that he attend individual psychotherapy to understand the behaviors that led him to this point.
What a person does with their time in the immediate aftermath of a crisis can heavily influence a partner and children’s experiences, “and that presence is incredibly important if at all possible,” Addison told USA TODAY Sports.
“When there is a major crisis in a family, and this certainly is a crisis, working parents often face hard choices about whether to prioritize the family or the work,” Addison said. “I think it shows a lot of dignity and character and seriousness to be willing to say that you’re stabilizing your family and attending to their needs, is the priority.”
Addison is trained in the Gottman Method, which is an approach to working with couples who have experienced infidelity and follows the mantra “atone, attune, attach.”
“Part of that is getting your questions answered, like ‘What really happened?'” Addison said.
Many Patriots fans would certainly like to know, in addition to the many people on social media who have rushed to make jokes and speculate about Vrabel and Russini’s interactions.
Whether or not the public is entitled demand to that accountability from Vrabel is another element to consider, Fisher said.
“I don’t think we do,” Fisher said. “It’s not about us.”
In Fisher’s view, other than the entire saga being a distraction, who cares? Some people feel like they know public figures and consider them a friend, Fisher said, but that relationship is one-sided.
“We feel almost betrayed when we don’t get the inside dirt on what’s happening, and I think that’s where the backlash comes in, or that feeling like we are owed an explanation,” she said.
“The only thing I think that makes this where the public might have an invested interest is whether or not this person that is directing the team that they love … is that person too distracted to do their job?” Fisher said. “I think that’s really the important question.”
McPherson doesn’t see a pearl-clutching public.
“People are not holding NFL coaches to a moral standard where they can never cheat, and if they cheat they have to lose their jobs,” McPherson said.
The public already knows the answer to the questions, she said, but every time he doesn’t answer it, he doesn’t come across as truthful.
“That’s why accountability is so important,” McPherson said.
Mike Vrabel scandal latest in Patriots history
The Patriots can pretend to be above being branded publicly as “cheaters” – “Deflategate,” “Spygate” and other controversies marked their dynastic run dating to the turn of the century – but they have ultimately shown that they do care at certain times, according to McPherson, such as when votes are cast for the Hall of Fame, which have kept Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick on the outside looking in.
When Vrabel revealed to ESPN that he would miss the final day of the draft, the Patriots said they fully supported Vrabel’s decision.
“Mike has been open with us about his commitment to being the best version of himself for his family, this team and our fans, and we respect the steps he is taking to follow through on that commitment,” the team said in a statement April 23.
Looking at Vrabel’s response, parts – admitting during the first press conference that he’s had difficult conversations with the team and people he cared about, being upfront about missing the draft to spend time with his family and sharing his decision to seek counseling – have been reasonable, McPherson said.
“But the sum is a disaster,” she said.
It’s a classic crisis containment strategy that keeps unfolding, she said. The challenge for Vrabel, and why the story lives on, is that he’s still trying to position himself away from his first move of dismissal and contempt – from the idea this is all “laughable.”
Until that changes, people won’t move on.
“He cannot get from A to Z without taking accountability,” McPherson said. “This will continue to follow him.
“Or,” McPherson said, “he could just own up to what happened.”
