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There is an interesting new addition to the Mike Vrabel-Dianna Russini timeline thanks to the latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. On Friday morning Torre revealed what he had discovered about the alleged relationship between the current head coach of the Patriots and Dianna Russini, the former NFL insider for The Athletic.
After noting that Pablo Torre Finds Out is a member of The Athletic Podcast Network, the host confirmed what had already been reported about the source of the pictures and how Page Six came to obtain them. He also drew attention to something that happened at the NFL league meetings which took place in late March in Phoenix, Ariz.
According to Torre, Russini was hosting a pool party on the opposite side of the Biltmore Hotel pool from where Fox's Jay Glazer was hosting what he called on X the "18th annual NFL Head Coaches day-drinking day at the NFL Owners Meeting.” In the caption for the video Glazer posted, he noted that 28 of 32 head coaches were there. One of the coaches not seen in the video was Vrabel. Torre also reveals that Russini and Vrabel were a topic of conversation at Glazer’s party.
"Now the thing that happened that day at the pool, March 31, 2026, at the Biltmore, is that all of these head coaches across the pool, and their wives across I am told, started talking about Vrabel and Russini," Torre told David Sampson on his podcast. "And this was before, days before the photos broke in the New York Post. Which is to say, also, a thing I found out was that their friendship was not breaking news to the people at the NFL owners meetings. They all knew that in fact they were out front together at this other competing aspriational party.”
"I can tell you that part of what the game is," said Torre. "That Dianna Russini was trying to play, was what if I do the thing that Jay Glazer does, quite successfully? How can I build my own party?"
Russini and Vrabel were photographed together on Mar. 28 in Sedona. The NFL's annual league meetings were held between Mar. 29 and Apr. 1 in Phoenix, with Glazer posting his video on Mar. 31. The photographs were then published by the New York Post on Apr. 7.
You can watch the entire conversation between Torre and Sampson, which touches on private investigators in sports, when personal relationships become a problem for a franchise and the difference between reporters and insiders, below.
Vrabel spoke with the media and then the Patriots’ first round draft pick on Thursday. He will be at the team’s draft headquarters on Friday as they make their second and third round selections, but then he will leave to begin counseling on Saturday and miss the fourth through seventh rounds of the draft. The Patriots have seven picks on the third day of the draft and general manager Eliot Wolf said that the team would miss Vrabel’s “stability as a person” on Sunday.
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STEPHEN DOUGLAS
Stephen Douglas is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in media since 2008 and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Douglas spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and previously wrote for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.
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