New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel and The Athletic’s NFL insider Dianna Russini both insist their relationship is strictly professional, but sports radio host Jared Stillman isn’t buying it.
Stillman, who hosts the “Stillman and Co.” podcast and appears on Sirius XM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio, says he has suspected something was going on between the two since 2022.
“I’ve had my hunches about Vrabel and Russini, which is why I’m glad this has come to light,” he said on the Tuesday, April 7 episode of his show. “It all started when Dianna Russini defended Mike Vrabel on ESPN’s morning show Get Up.”
He then played a clip from March 2022 in which Russini, 43, could be heard talking up the Tennessee Titans, the team that Vrabel, 50, coached at the time.
“But that’s not all,” Stillman asserted. “I also caught wind in 2023 that Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini would be attending a Super Bowl party that I also was planning to attend. I wondered: Would I see them there?”
Vrabel and Russini became the subject of speculation on Tuesday when Page Six published a series of photos of the two of them together at a resort in Arizona. The two were seen clasping each other’s hands in one shot and with their arms wrapped around each other in another. Both Vrabel and Russini are currently married.
Stillman also pointed to a major piece of news that Russini broke regarding the 2023 NFL Draft.
“It was, in fact, Dianna Russini who reported on the eve of the 2023 NFL Draft that it was the Titans who were looking to move up from 11 to 3 to draft then-Ohio State quarterback CJ Stroud,” he said. “Was that Mike Vrabel propping his mistress up? Because the cat got out of the bag and the Texans decided to take Stroud at 2 to keep Tennessee, a division rival, from landing what they thought was a franchise quarterback.”
Stillman continued, “And if Vrabel was trying to prop up his friend or prop up his mistress, it did work. Because less than a year later, Dianna Russini inked a major deal to become the top NFL insider at The Athletic. And that’s why when Mike Vrabel was the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, on my radio show in Nashville, any time we had a Dianna Russini story, we made sure to play this.”
Stillman played an audio clip of “Hail to the Chief,” with a voiceover saying, “This Dianna Russini Report comes directly from the desk of Mike Vrabel, most likely.”
Vrabel and Russini both denied to Page Six that there was anything untoward happening in the photographs.
“These photos show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable,” Vrabel said. “This doesn’t deserve any further response.”
“The photos don’t represent the group of six people who were hanging out during the day,” Russini added. “Like most journalists in the NFL, reporters interact with sources away from stadiums and other venues.”
Us Weekly has reached out to representatives for Vrabel and Russini for comment.
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