Mike Vrabel gives a press conference at the New England Patriots' 2026 minicamp. Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images
Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images
We don’t know exactly what transpired between New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and former Athletic NFL reporter Dianna Russini, how long it lasted, or how it might have impacted his personal or professional life.
But we do know that whatever was happening was apparently resolved during personal counseling that kept him away from Day 3 of the NFL Draft.
Vrabel and the Patriots initially tried to bury their heads in the sand around the scandal until the head coach finally offered a mea culpa for… something. And while the strategy didn’t seem wise, it does feel as though he and the team are going to make it to the start of the season with the chance to put it behind them (at least until Russini does her inevitable tell-all or the Patriots go 0-4 to start the season).
While the Patriots media peppered Vrabel with a few questions about his presumedly inappropriate relationship with an NFL reporter, they’ve mostly let the topic die as the preseason has gone on. However, the coach did get one roundabout question related to the situation on Tuesday, when he was asked about all that counseling he had mentioned.
“You said this offseason that you were seeking counseling,” a media member asked, via the Patriots press conference transcript. “I wanted to follow up on that and see what you learned from that counseling, and how did you balance that personal commitment with getting ready for this season?”
“I think we always look at improvement,” Vrabel responded. “As we talk about getting ready for the next season, we always look at improvement and ways that we can improve individually and how we can improve as a team. It’s really critical that we continue to do that on and off the field. I believe in that. I believe in everything that we can do to help this football team, to help our coaches, to help myself and everybody else included. This journey that we are going to go on is going to be completely different than the one we went on last year. That’s all of our jobs, is to prepare for it now. So, really focused on our improvement individually and as a team, and that’s something that we can do today.
“You look at the O-line, and we talk about them and their ability to play together as a unit. There are so many combination blocks that they are involved in, and we have to be better. Again, five O-linemen have to be able to sustain a line of scrimmage, and I just walked into that meeting room and said, ‘How do we improve? How do we improve our combination blocks?’ We are not asking you to block everybody 1-on-1. So, I think we all have areas that we can improve on, and that includes the coaches.”
Honestly, well played.
Vrabel’s answer reminded me of a tactic that crisis management expert Jeff Hunt recently shared with me.
“I have this thing I call ‘building blue water between the question and your answer,’ which is to say, move the reporter further and further away from the question,” said Hunt. “Go into the depths of the game you played last night. Dissect it, break it down the way people would want you to do on a normal day, but you don’t always do. But do it because that sort of carves up time and gets you further and further away from the issue and the question.”
It sounds like someone gave Vrabel some very similar advice.