Americans Don’t Need Facts to Rush to Judgment
Especially when it involves a woman accused of behaving badly.
By Megan Armstrong
Every scandal’s aftermath presents two buckets.
You can either rush to pile on judgment and exacerbate the worst moment of someone’s life, or you can hold a mirror up to the public’s reaction.
In the case of Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel, choose the second bucket.
Page Six published photos on April 7 showing Russini and Vrabel hugging, hanging out by the pool, and possibly holding hands at the Ambiente resort in Sedona, Arizona, in late March. It was an automatic head-tilter because Russini was The Athletic’s senior NFL insider, and Vrabel is the head coach of the New England Patriots.
It was ripe for innuendo only because Russini is a woman and Vrabel is a man.
“I do find that the reaction to this is completely one-sided. [...] Dianna is completely taking all the strays for this, and Mike Vrabel is just gonna go back to his job, and that’ll be that,” acclaimed sports journalist Jemele Hell said on The Dan Le Batard Show last week, adding, “I don’t know how an investigation can exonerate someone when the perception has really taken over the reality.”
On April 14, Russini resigned from The Athletic. Russini maintained, as she and Vrabel had in their initial individual statements to Page Six, that nothing inappropriate happened. Her resignation, she said, was prompted by not wanting to subject herself to further public shaming.
Vrabel, meanwhile, got to skip the Patriots’ pre-draft press conference last week. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed to ESPN’s Ben Strauss that the league will not review Vrabel’s behavior under the personal conduct policy.
On Tuesday, Vrabel finally addressed the situation. He began a press conference by saying, “I’ve had some difficult conversations with people I care about about — with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. In order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me. That starts with me.”
By Wednesday night, ESPN’s Mike Reiss relayed a statement from Vrabel that said, in part, “I have committed to seeking counseling, starting this weekend.” Reiss noted Vrabel would remain with the Patriots for the first two days of the 2026 NFL Draft before departing to “be with his family this weekend outside of Massachusetts.”
Vrabel’s job will be waiting for him when he’s ready to return. He gets to be the narrator of his own version of this story.
It plays to Vrabel’s favor that he has the ultimate job security in the NFL: He just led the Patriots to a 14-3 record and a Super Bowl LX appearance, winning Coach of the Year in the process. His boss, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, has a sordid history of his own.
I do not know Dianna Russini, and it should be noted and underscored that none of us know what happened between her and Vrabel. I have no interest in speculating over the nature of her relationship with Vrabel, nor the ripple effect on her marriage to Kevin Goldschmidt or Vrabel’s marriage to Jen Vrabel.
That should be reserved for reporters, such as Strauss and Pablo Torre, working to untangle assumption from fact. The nationwide conversation mushrooming absent fact highlights just how optional facts have become in American discourse.
Confirmation bias is one hell of a drug.
It’s true that Russini was subject to a stricter code of ethics than Vrabel. The Athletic is owned and platformed by The New York Times, and the Times’ editorial standards state its journalists must “avoid conflict of interest, or even the appearance of a conflict.”
Not every company has the same editorial policy, to be sure, but insiders everywhere regularly blur that particular definition of “conflict of interest.” That’s part of the game.
On Monday’s The Dan Patrick Show, Patrick and Sports Illustrated senior NFL reporter Albert Breer examined the sexist double standard. Breer said he approaches sourcing as “get[ting] to know these people as you would anyone else in your life.” Patrick recalled getting too close to Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi, which made it awkward when Patrick had to report on them during MLB’s steroid scandal.
“It just puts more scrutiny on how we handle and manage our relationships, regardless of what actually happened in Arizona,” Breer said. “I’ve thought about this a lot and how — and this is before any of this happened — like, you know, I’ve always sort of felt like, you know, I could be seen with a head coach or a general manager of whatever team, and nobody would really think that was weird, right? The two of us by ourselves. But women in our business may not have that luxury, you know? And this probably puts even more scrutiny on those sorts of things that I view as necessary to me doing my job.”
Just last month, Fox Sports NFL insider Jay Glazer posted a video celebrating his 18th annual day-drinking pool event with NFL head coaches — and Michael Phelps? — at the NFL annual league meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
ESPN’s preeminent NFL newsbreaker Adam Schefter was caught sending an entire draft for approval to then-Washington Commanders president Bruce Allen in 2011, calling him “Mr. Editor,” which Schefter said in 2021 was an anomaly and “a step too far.”
What about Vrabel, who could have been using his friendship with Russini to manipulate Patriots-related news blasts?
What if — if — Russini got caught up in thinking she was part of the boys’ club and started behaving with that false sense of security?
There are different power dynamics at play if — if — Russini and Vrabel were engaged in a romantic affair. But if you’re going to put Russini in a fishbowl, you have to raise an eyebrow at the entire insider industry.
None of this would absolve Russini, however, if she’s found to have had an inappropriate relationship with Vrabel or to have lied to her employer.
Strauss’ ESPN report cited multiple sources in relaying that Russini “never provided sufficient evidence” to The Athletic executives to support that she had been at Ambiente on a hiking trip with friends and not a romantic getaway with Vrabel. Eyewitnesses also “contradicted” Russini’s version of events.
If only the bulk of the public outcry came from an earnest mistrust and a yearning for concrete truth.
Based on centuries of misogyny and the daily happenings in a post-“fake news” America, I find it hard to believe people are clutching their pearls over the purity of our news. We could use more honest reflections like those of Breer and Patrick, or Charlotte Wilder and Madeline Hill’s “Sports Gossip” episode.
But those conversations all lead back to the same uncomfortable question that has loomed over society for ages: How much do we really care about the truth?
Megan Armstrong is a freelance journalist, podcast producer, and perpetual content consumer. Her work has appeared in Billboard, Boardroom, Esquire, GQ, GRAMMY.com, NYLON, Teen Vogue, The Kansas City Star, The Hollywood Reporter, UPROXX, and elsewhere.