Just hours after a new set of damning pictures of a married Superbowl star with his alleged mistress hit the tabloids Thursday, a dour-faced NFL coach admitted to unspecified “actions.”
“I take accountability for my actions,” a dour Mike Vrabel told a bank of microphones Thursday night, announcing he would skip the weekend football draft.
“This is not an easy thing for me to admit,” the head of the New England Patriots said without specificity.
The married Vrabel, who has been dodging questions for two weeks about a supposed affair with a married reporter, told a roomful of reporters he was “taking the weekend off.”
“My family needs me this weekend, and that’s where I’ll be,” he said.
So suddenly now he’s a family man after abandoning them – for apparently the past six years, at least.
In a closely-linked development, NFL reporter Dianna Russini shut down her X account as her alleged boyfriend was seemingly throwing her under the team bus.
Russini has denied having an affair with Vrabel, despite abruptly resigning from The New York Times after the New York Post earlier this month published damning photos showing her and Vrabel allegedly canoodling at an Arizona resort.
The first batch of shots were followed by another set of pictures that the post published Thursday showing the two of them together at a Manhattan bar, kissing and holding each other closely in what appeared to be a serious conversation.
Twitter was on fire over the affair, posters now actually speculating – some in lifelike parody – whether Vrabel may have fathered one of her two children, a boy named, aptly, Michael.
In his statement Thursday night, the Pats head coach spent much of his time lavishly, awkwardly thanking team management for standing behind him.
X users speculated whether Vrabel is about to be fired but a statement from management seemed to delay if not rule out that possibility.
“The New England Patriots fully support Mike Vrabel’s decision to prioritize his family first, as well as his own well-being,” the team said.
What that statement didn’t say, however, was that management was intent on keeping Vrabel as its coach.
“Mike has been open with us about his commitment to being the best version of himself for his family, this team and our fans, and we respect the steps he is taking to follow through on that commitment,” management said.
“We are confident in the leadership and communication Mike has established with our personnel staff throughout this pre-draft process,” it added. “While he will not be present Saturday, we know the draft evaluations are complete and Eliot Wolf and his personnel staff are prepared to execute our draft as planned this weekend.”
Wolf, director of Pats personnel, has been as forceful as his coach in downplaying the alleged affair.
But despite management claiming that “Mike has been open with us,” Vrabel has been playing the denial game drip by drip in a pathetic test of how much would stick.
When he was asked Thursday night how he went from laughing the pics off two weeks ago, to telling ESPN Wednesday that he was seeking counseling, Vrabel sounded literally unintelligible.
“That’s a private and personal matter. I don’t think that those comments … I think that was, I’m always gonna attempt to protect your family,” he said.“I would never be dismissive but I think my family and this football team are the most important thing and that’s what I plan to do, and I’m excited about the challenge with both of those things.”
Vrabel initially told the Post that the hotel pics taken at an Arizona hotel “show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. This doesn’t deserve any further response.”
Within two short weeks, suddenly he announced he was “going into counseling” after “difficult conversations” with his wife – just hours before coincidentally a new batch of incriminating photos hit the tabloids.
Pix published Thursday show him and Russini kissing at a New York City bar in March 2020 – six years before the hotel photos, and six months before Russini married her now-husband, Shake Shack executive Kevin Goldschmidt.
While Vrabel and Russini were trying to avoid being pinned down on their relationship, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took dodgeball to a new level.
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg, acting as if he were literally afraid to ask Goodell an actual question Thursday night at draft headquarters, finally ratcheted up the courage to query the commissioner’s stance on the Patriots scandal.
“This is not a personal conduct policy,” Goodell said. “It’s a personal matter, and we’ll leave it at that. I think the teams handle these matters when they’re personal matters.”
The commissioner trying to differentiate between “personal conduct policy” and “personal matter” makes him sounds like he might after a white-wine beach party at his oceanside mansion in Prouts Neck, Maine.
Greenberg didn’t ask a follow-up question, evidence of the pathetic quality of legacy journalism.
