Vrabel Makes The Call
I wasn’t expecting this story to get this much traction. I figured Russini would either get fired or “step down” (She did the latter), and that she’d go quiet for a little while and then end up at Barstool. I expected absolutely nothing to happen to Mike Vrabel (that we’d see, at least), because it’s always the woman who gets punished. To be fair, these outcomes are still on the table. But the drama has gotten juicier.
About a week after the initial bombshell, some more pictures surfaced of the two of them together at a bar. This time it featured actual lip-on-lip action, not just some cutesy fingering. The biggest part? It was 6 years ago. A short time before her wedding. This event prompted other people to start looking through their old candids and yet another photo of the two of them was found, having fun in a casino after he was fired. The photographer originally assumed Russini was Vrabel’s wife until the recent news caused them to look back at them.
Russini’s biggest mistake (well, besides engaging in a long affair with Mike Vrabel) was not immediately deleting her socials. This gave folks time to find some…wild stuff. Her son is named…Michael. Did she name him after Vrabel? Is..Vrabel the father? We do not know, and while speculating is extremely funny, it makes me feel absolutely awful for the children and the spouses dealing with this behind the scenes.
We have plenty of videos of both of them putting down their spouse in interviews as jokes. The famous clip of Vrabel saying he’d cut of his dick for a super bowl has extra context of him disparaging his wife and suggesting a dead bedroom in the same clip. This is the kinda stuff that nobody thought about until this thing puts everything into a new perspective. A lot of it probably was jokes, but I’ve learned to be wary of people who constantly joke about how their spouse sucks or their marriage is bad. A lot of comedy is based on substance.
Russini maintained her innocence in her resignation, but her weak excuse of “girls’ hiking trip” never had legs. It would have been an extremely easy thing to prove correct if true. Those friends would speak up, provide photos, anything. No evidence was provided.
Vrabel seems to have more visibly accepted the reality of the issue. While Kraft has apparently been working overtime to bury the story (what a swell guy) Vrabel came out and shocked everyone with an announcement on Draft Day morning. He would not be with the team for the later rounds as he had family matters to attend to after some difficult talks. He did not admit outright to cheating, but he looked spent and tired, as if he knew he didn’t have to. He sounded like a man who got ultimatum’d and has no choice but to put his marriage before anything else.
Is Vrabel getting fired? I doubt it. Being a good husband isn’t in his job description and Kraft wouldn’t give a fuck if it was. Kraft isn’t going to pull that trigger unless this somehow gets worse and the tampering discussions regarding how they may have manipulated the market for AJ Brown trade rumors to ramp up. Or maybe if Vrabel loses the juice and the team craters. The NFL should probably investigate the tampering discussion.
Personally, I say fire the man. How many cheating scandals are the Patriots going to have in my lifetime
The more scandals that potentially interfere with the smooth and possibly successful operation of the Patriots, the better. I’d love to see Kraft desperately trying to smother a story where half the team dressed up like furries and were caught in an orgy happening in a submarine with Joe Buck as the captain getting noshed off by Tom Brady.
That’s, uh, kinda specific
That’s a really interesting take, I agree it’s surprising how quickly things shifted. It makes you wonder what Vrabel’s long-term strategy is.
I bet Kraft is visiting some of his BFF Trump’s immigrant camps for some extra hand jobs in between his naps now just to keep himself calm. Do you see what you’ve done, Mike Vrabel??? You’ve upset such an oh-very-kind-and-nice old man.
*ahem* FuckRobertKrafttoHellandSteveTischwithhim* Anyway, what was I saying?
Oh yea, the latter part that you dedicated all of two sentences to is what pisses me off the most, Dave, and I’m not blaming you for dedicating all of two sentences to it, but so many f@#%g people are like, “People have affairs all the time, it’s no big deal. This has nothing to do with football.”
Tampering, motherf@#%rs. How many stories did Russini write about how mad AJ Brown was? She CONTINUOUSLY wrote articles linking him to the Patriots. I mean, could a world possibly exist where Vrabel was like, “Hey babe, now that we’re out here on our hiking trip with friends, lying naked on top of each other in a hotel room not doing anything to be ashamed of, can you make a fake story about AJ Brown to the Pats and just continuously leak it for months and months, the way my useless shriveled piece of junk between my legs leaks, so that I can win my Super Bowl and finally cut it off before the gangrene spreads? Thanks!”
And BEYOND that, there is a long and established etiquette for people in positions of power using that power as leverage. I have to go through sexual harassment training every year to remind me of this. I know, I know, it doesn’t SEEM like this situation is heading that way, so I’m not implying this IS what happened, but. BUT. It is borderline criminal for the NFL to not even INVESTIGATE to make ABSOLTUTELY sure. What if Vrabel went up to Rossinni, and either offered or threatened her by providing or withholding scoops unless she slept with him? (Yes, I’m aware this doesn’t make her innocent of cheating, but it sure makes what he did that much worse).
The fucking NFL, man. They won’t investigate because basically every team engages in tampering, and just like Spygate, they’re terrified that once you pull up the floorboards, the rot is going to be COMPLETELY visible. So yea, burn the video tapes, don’t release what you found on Tom Brady’s totally-normally-destroyed-phone, and I guess don’t bother looking into what *seems* like an absolutely obvious tampering situation, at the very minimum to ensure there wasn’t any untowards coercement / blackmail / forcing on the part of Vrabel.
But yea, I remember how it works now. You can’t wear the wrong socks on game day, you can’t kneel, you can’t pretend you’re mooning the crowd, but if you’re in a position of power in the NFL, it doesn’t f#@%#g matter, you do whatever the hell you want.
This comment absolutely REEKS of pure hatred.
Accurate. XD I’m worse in person, if you can believe it. I have Deadpool’s mouth, but without the wit or healing factor.
Preach, BB. Having a media personality in your pocket is an incredible amount of access. It’s why journalists NEED to disclose any conflicts of interest, because it’s kind of important to know this when viewing their work. Not to mention the fact that she gets to vote for COTY, MVP, etc. Sure, one vote isn’t usually a huge deal breaker….except this past year it TOTALLY WAS! So there’s additional ways in which Vrabel’s access to Russini is incredibly inappropriate.
Absolutely spot on, preach!
Personally, I love how the decision to stay through day 2 of the draft but skip day 3 reveals exactly how much he values his marriage: more than a fourth round pick, but not as much as a third rounder.
“I expected absolutely nothing to happen to Mike Vrabel (that we’d see, at least), because it’s always the woman who gets punished.”
Yes, but in this case it is the reporter who should get punished more than the coach. Much more severe breach of integrity.
Admittedly I don’t read the Athletic and haven’t since they went paywalled (and doubly haven’t since they joined the NYT), so I don’t know… but did she write on the Patriots or Vrabel? If she did, you’re right, that’s a major ethical issue.
She did an interview with him last summer that has been making the rounds, featuring the remarkable quote:
““Your wife is a superb athlete,” Russini, 43, told Mike, 50, in a resurfaced clip from The Athletic, before the coach corrected her, “I would say, [Jen] used to be [a superb athlete].”
True, this has nothing to do with gender. No reason for Dave to throw that in there. If this was a male journalist screwing his sources he would have been quickly fired.
Crazy that this affair may have been going on for years, from two people regularly in the news, and it’s just coming to light now. Also, I thought the alt-text was disturbing until I realized it was a reference to a strange Vrabel quote.
It is a more serious breach on Russini’s part, yes, but Vrabel gained a then-reputable insider that allowed him to potentially sway national reporting regarding his team. Who knows how many times he could have had her plant a story to reduce a free agent’s value or pressure a team into a trade by spreading a rumor that another party was interested? That’s absolutely something anyone from Belichick’s coaching tree would do for an advantage. If a team talking to a player an hour too early is tampering, this sure as hell should count too.
Without reading any comments, cheating and anything that puts women in a semi-degrading spot……Kraft approves…
People would rather make backhanded jokes about their spouses rather than talk things out; I question why they were even married to their other spouses in the first place.
Christian guilt, mostly. They want to get laid but they don’t want God to be mad at them, so they rush into marriage with the first person they find attractive and only realize later how incompatible they are. Now I only had to read the book a couple dozen times for my Christian homeschooling, so I could be wrong, but I always got the impression that sham marriages and adultery piss the Lord off a LOT more than normal boning outside of wedlock.
1 Corinthians 7:2 ?
I said I believe it pisses God off MORE than the premaritals. One line of a passage from one of Paul’s epistles (the Biblical equivalent of an advice column) where he’s essentially clarifying to the recipients that they aren’t expected to be 100% chaste all the time, to do it in moderation and only with their spouse doesn’t contradict that interpretation.
So with what is (admittedly speculative) evidence history of a longer term affair, does this move him out of “Dumb Mistake Zone” into something like “Moron Zone”?
Maybe Vrabel and Kraft can go to the seedy massage parlors of Boston now. Birds of a feather.
He’d need a time machine for that, for better or for worse. The Combat Zone has been replaced with bubble tea joints and “inclusive living communities”. They’d have to head to Providence (closer to Foxboro than Boston!) for that.
Idk about Boston that well but I’ll take your word for it lol
I’d put him in Red Flag Zone. It’s repeated over the course of 6+ years and barring some arrangement between both partners and their spouses, it’s malicious. What he’s said about his wife and marriage do him no favors either.
this one made me LOL
great use of “camera pulls back to reveal context rendering conversation in a different light.”
Vrabel got confused about what kind of cheating helps the Patriots
Diana Russini’s HusbandHugh From Pragmata
Supporting kids that aren’t theirs