Just yesterday, Megyn said she couldn’t figure out why the story of New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and former Athletic reporter Dianna Russini’s relationship status had become national news because – aside from the ethics violations Russini may have committed as a journalist – it seemed like a personal matter.
Hours later, she got her answer as the scandal took a series of wild turns.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Jesse Kelly, host of The Jesse Kelly Show, to discuss the “explosive” new developments and why it “seems like these two are a couple of sociopaths.”
The Initial Photos
The controversy surrounding Vrabel, 50, and Russini, 43, began on April 7 when The New York Post’s Page Six published photos of the pair appearing to get cozy while at a tony resort in Sedona, Arizona, in late March.
The pics showed them holding hands and hugging at various places on the property, including on a private rooftop of one of the hotel’s bungalows. According to Page Six, the roof is only accessible from the two-person bungalows, which cost up to $2,100 a night.
Vrabel was reportedly in Arizona for a scouting event in Tempe on Friday, March 27, and a meeting of the NFL Competition Committee in Phoenix the following week. He and Russini reportedly met up the weekend in between because she was also in town to cover the meeting. She later shared a byline on a piece for The Athletic, which is owned by The New York Times, about the gathering.
Vrabel, a former Patriots player who was the head coach of the Tennessee Titans before returning to his former team, and Russini, who has been covering the NFL for over a decade at ESPN and The Athletic, initially tried to throw cold water on suggestions that they behaved inappropriately.
Vrabel, a married father or two, told Page Six the pictures were “laughable” and did not “deserve any further response.” Russini, a married mother of two, claimed the photos misrepresented the situation. “The photos don’t represent the group of six people who were hanging out during the day,” she told Page Six. “Like most journalists in the NFL, reporters interact with sources away from stadiums and other venues.”
Russini Resigns
A week later, Russini announced she was resigning from her role at The Athletic amid an internal investigation in a defiant letter that she posted on social media. It read, in part:
“I have covered the NFL with professionalism and dedication throughout my career, and I stand behind every story I have ever published… Commentators in various media have engaged in self-feeding speculation that is simply unmoored from the facts… It continues to escalate, fueled by repeated leaks, and I have no interest in submitting to a public inquiry… Rather than allowing this to continue, I have decided to step aside now — before my current contract expires on June 30. I do so not because I accept the narrative that has been constructed around this episode, but because I refuse to lend it further oxygen or to let it define me or my career.”
Vrabel, meanwhile, had remained quiet, but this week’s NFL Draft brought the story back into the spotlight. On Tuesday, he told reporters the situation was a “personal and private matter,” but he acknowledged he has “had some difficult conversations with people I care about – with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players.”
By Wednesday night, Vrabel was singing a different tune, telling ESPN he would not be with his team for day three of the draft on Saturday because he was seeking counseling. “As I said the other day, I promised my family, this organization and this team that I was going to give them the best version of me that I can possibly give them,” Vrabel said. “In order to do so, I have committed to seeking counseling, starting this weekend. This is something that I have given a lot of thought to and is something I would advise a player to do if I was counseling them.”
“I have always wanted to lead by example, and I believe this is what I have to do to be the best husband, father and coach that I possibly can be,” he added. “This is not an easy thing for me to admit, but it is one that I know will make me a better person. I appreciate the support that everyone has given me and promise a stronger resolve as a result.”
In a statement before the draft began on Thursday, the Patriots said they “fully support” Vrabel’s decision.
Another Photo Dump
And then the story took another turn. Thursday afternoon, Page Six dropped another set of photos dating all the way back to March 2020 that show Vrabel and Russini being very touchy-feely at a New York City bar.
The pictures were reportedly taken at Tribeca Tavern around midnight six years ago. A source told Page Six they were sitting close to each other while at the bar. The person said they saw Russini with her legs between Vrabel’s as they were “having a glorious time” and giving each other “a bunch of pecks, constantly.”
Vrabel was working as head coach of the Titans at the time, while Russini was an NFL reporter for ESPN. While he had been married to his wife, Jen Vrabel, for over 20 years at that point, Russini was six months away from marrying her husband Kevin Goldschmidt. The couple tied the knot in September 2020.
Incriminating Evidence
Internet sleuths wasted no time jumping on the latest addition to the Vrabel-Russini timeline, resurfacing an eyebrow-raising 2021 tweet from the reporter in which she discussed her child’s name. Russini gave birth to a son she named Michael in August 2021.
She deleted her X account at some point Thursday, but not before this tweet she allegedly posted on August 11, 2021, resurfaced: “Keep looking at my almost 4 day old son Michael while trying to figure out who are the best Michaels to ever play and coach in the NFL?”
“That’s smoking gun territory. I mean, that’s when I got interested,” Megyn said. “Is that child his? Who the F, who’s having an affair on their husband with somebody named Mike, and then has a baby boy, and then names him Mike? You know, you could stop the story there. But then [she] tweets out, ‘I’m sitting here staring at him in all his glory, wondering who the best Mikes were ever to play and coach in the NFL,’ which this guy did both.”
To add insult to injury, people have also unearthed an uncomfortable number of clips in which Russini speaks negatively of her marriage and her husband, while a clip of Russini and Vrabel from last fall shows him disparaging his wife, who played volleyball at Ohio State where the pair met.
“Your wife, Jen, is a superb athlete,” Russini, who was wearing very short shorts and a very tight white tank top, said to Vrabel.
“I would say used to be,” he responded coldly.
“Maybe used to be, but she still got it in her, I’m sure, the way you do,” Russini countered. “So, which sports do you think Jen could beat you at now?”
“Ping pong,” Vrabel replied, before saying he gets “too aggressive” and just tries to “kill it” after a couple of shots.
Why People Care
With these new wrinkles added, Megyn said she thinks she understands why this scandal has garnered so much attention. “I think it’s because it’s touching on some very basic human themes,” she noted. “No one likes infidelity, and no one likes lying, repeated lying. Obviously, if you are in an affair, you are lying to your spouse… But this lying went well beyond that and now may have crossed over into what looks diabolical, like serial pathology amongst both parties involved.”
It certainly doesn’t help, Megyn added, that Vrabel and Russini chose to be indignant from the start. “People do care about this because he’s in a very prominent role and so is she, and they came out and they lied to us. And not only did they lie, but… she got rather indignant, holier than thou, like, ‘how dare you’… That is not the way to handle it,” she explained. “I think the public actually would have been more where you and I were yesterday, if they just come out and said, ‘Not going to comment on this, moving on.'”
While Megyn said Russini would have had to tell her employer the truth because “she would have been in trouble ethically” if she was, in fact, romantically involved with a source, no one else outside of her family was owed an explanation.
“They don’t have to share anything about their private lives with us… It’s not like he’s a politician or a clergyman or she’s running for office,” she noted. “But once they started making their public beds, they were going to have to lie in them and that’s what’s happening.”
Who’s Behind the Leaks?
Given that the pair seemed to handle the fallout of the initial Sendona pictures exactly the wrong way, Kelly couldn’t help but wonder if there is more to the story. “So, I have a question… We get these pictures from Sedona… We get these pictures from six years ago at a Tribeca nightclub. We have public statements. The Michael thing… From what I understand that’s not at all the first thing that she has said publicly affectionately about this Mike Vrabel guy,” he explained. “So, do you think it might be her – meaning, do you think all this might be coming from her? Because I’ll tell you what, I do.”
“Page Six is going to show up at some dirty hippie hotel in Sedona just randomly? No… Somebody tipped them off. How do you come up with these six-year-old pictures from some tavern? Someone kept that on their iPhone? No one would even do that,” Kelly continued. “Why would you make these public statements? I’m assuming, if you’re going to sleep around, you want to at least keep it pretty quiet. She doesn’t seem to be keeping anything quiet. This is before any of this stuff came out. Again, I don’t know any of this… But I’ll tell you what: A lot of things add up to she wants this out there.”
Megyn was willing to admit that it wasn’t the craziest theory. “Oh, wow. There is great reason to believe that… because the internet sleuths are the best… [and] they have found so many statements by her,” she noted. “And I was thinking these were Freudian slips… But maybe not. Maybe this woman has actually been desperate to have us know this truth for a long, long time, even though she’s still married.”
“I’m just gonna keep coming back to… if she wanted this out there, what would she have done any differently,” Kelly wondered.
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kelly by tuning in to episode 1,303 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.