FOXBOROUGH - Mike Vrabel addressed the elephant in the room.
Two days before the 2026 NFL Draft, the Patriots’ coach met with the media on Tuesday to address the recent scandal involving himself and former Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini.
The pair was photographed together at an adults-only resort in Arizona before the NFL League Meetings. After the New York Post story made that encounter public, Russini resigned from her position at The Athletic.
On Tuesday, two Patriots players were scheduled to talk to the media. Vrabel opted to speak instead. The coach opened with a statement, followed by a question and answer session with reporters.
“Let me first begin by saying thank you. Thank you for your patience that you’ve shown in a personal and private matter for me and obviously everybody involved. I know that that’s not easy for you. I understand, I could have addressed you guys sooner, but it was important to me to have a conversation with the players, which I did yesterday, very candidly, as we began our offseason program, which everyone is excited to be a part of.
“Stacey (James) has mentioned the player’s availability. It was never my intention to have them speak to you or address you before I did. And so I asked him to come today to talk with you. I also don’t want to take away from the draft, the weekend of the draft. This is an important time for us, our organization, and the excitement and the joy that those players are going to have, that we bring onto our football team. They’re starting an amazing journey, one that should be celebrated as we welcome them onto our team.
“With that being said, I’ve had some difficult conversations with people that I care about, my family, the organization, coaches, the players. 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. We never want to be the cause of a distraction.
“These are comments and questions that I’ve answered for the team and with the team. We’ll keep those private to ourselves. I care deeply about this football team and excited to coach them. I also know that I’m going to attack each day with humility and focus.
And 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’s what I know. And I’m excited to do that. I wanted to go and just address this. And thank you for your patience in dealing with private and personal matter."
On Russini resigning from her position at The Athletic:
“I respect and I appreciate every single question, but I’m not going to be able to comment on anything as it relates to that. I appreciate your job and what you guys have got to do, but I have to make my comments and what I answer about our football team.”
Did Patriots players have questions about the situation?
“I’ve had conversations and questions. Yeah, I’ve addressed that and talked to them. Tell them all the time, we have to speak for ourselves, and what they have to say on it is what they’ll have to say. We’ve talked, and again, there’s a lot of excitement in this new building. These guys are off to a really good start. It’s been a really good two days, but that was how we started the offseason program – a conversation I had with them."
Was the conversation with your players difficult for you?
“No, not difficult. I have to lead. I have to make sure that I address things, communicate and I do that with everything that we do. We’ve got a great group of guys. We’re excited to teach them. We’re excited to help them. Preparing for a journey is what we talked about, and that journey takes a lot of different twists and turns, positively, as we saw last year, also times negatively. You know, there’s going to be a lot along the way. So we talked to them about preparing for the journey.
“Well, again, we talk about distractions. We have to be able to handle it, everything that comes our way. So those are, those are things we always talk about, is how we handle those things.”
On calling the initial implications “laughable” in his statement to the New York Post, and if that’s still the way he feels:
“I appreciate the question. I’m going to focus on our football team. I think I’ve addressed what I felt like was important, so focusing on our football team and the importance of teaching these guys, bringing a new team together, 13 new players.”
How would you characterize your conversations with ownership over the situation?
“Those will be in (confidence). We’ll keep those between us. Again, I understand and thank you, guys, for your patience. Just want to focus on the football team and getting off to a good start. Eliot (Wolf)’s staff with Ryan (Cowden) and Alonzo (Highsmith), we’ve all worked very hard, and we’re excited to bring these guys onto our team this week. However, we can add them through the draft, the post-draft, so it’s important that those players are celebrated. They’re gonna have a lot of excitement on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”