Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was awkwardly quizzed about his marriage counseling sessions with wife Jen during a press conference on Tuesday.
Controversy surrounding the New England coach erupted in March when the New York Post published suggestive photos of Vrabel fraternizing with The Athletic’s former reporter, Dianna Russini, at a $2,500-a-night, adults-only retreat in Arizona.
While the married Russini has denied any wrongdoing and stood by her reporting on Vrabel, she was later placed on leave at The Athletic before ultimately submitting her resignation to the website’s parent company, The New York Times.
Speaking before the first round of April’s NFL Draft, Vrabel stopped short of confessing to an affair. However, he did admit to causing ‘a distraction to the people that I care most about’ and revealed he would attend a family counseling session.
Nearly four months on from that admission, Vrabel was questioned about how the sessions went, resulting in a painfully awkward interaction with a reporter.
On Tuesday, an ESPN reporter asked: ‘What did you learn from that counseling and how did you balance that personal commitment with getting ready for this season?’
Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel awkwardly sidestepped a question about his marriage counseling sessions with wife Jen during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon
Russini left her job as an NFL reporter after intimate pictures emerged of her and Vrabel
Vrabel replied: ‘I think we always look at improvement. 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 we can do to help this football team, to help our coaches, to help myself and everybody else included.’
He added: ‘This journey that we’re going to go on is going to be completely different than the one we went on last year. That’s all of our jobs to prepare for it now.’
The previously embattled head coach continued by suggesting he is ‘really focused on our improvement individually and as a team’.
‘That’s something we can do today,’ he added. ‘I think we all have areas that we can improve on, and that include the coaches.
‘We’re gonna always try and find ways to prepare and focus on our mental fitness,’ he said. ‘That’s gonna continue with me, the coaches, the staff and our players.’
In April, the Post published pictures purportedly showing Vrabel and Russini kissing at a bar in Manhattan in March of 2020. Russini married Shake Shack executive Kevin Goldschmidt in September of that year and has since given birth to the couple’s two sons.
The Daily Mail also published photos of Vrabel and a pregnant Russini renting a boat on a Tennessee lake in 2021, when he was coaching the Titans and she was reporting on the team for ESPN.
Vrabel and his wife Jen are pictured in 2025 when he was named Patriots head coach
Former reporter Russini pictured with husband, Kevin Goldschmidt, who she married in 2020
Last month, Vrabel and his wife of 27 years were spotted in Manhattan, where they attended the highly publicized wedding of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to pop star Taylor Swift.
Vrabel was spotted entering a chauffeured limousine ahead of his wife, Jen, which prompted some backlash online.
‘Not holding the car door for his wife he’s publicly cheating on is certainly a choice,’ one critic wrote on X in response to footage from the New York Post.
Meanwhile, Vrabel and Russini were dragged back into the spotlight earlier this month after Aaron Rodgers called ESPN ‘gutless’ and accused them of not covering the affair scandal.
‘You have literally an individual that maybe used to work at ESPN that covers our league at the highest level, and there’s a major scandal, and it’s just like, nobody can f***ing talk about it? What are we even doing here?’
When countered by McAfee’s co-host Boston Connor, who claimed ‘personal lives are personal lives… I feel like you of all people should know that,’ Rodgers added: ‘I understand, but if it’s affecting certain things.
‘If there’s leaks going on, if there’s tampering going on… if that person is also an MVP voter and a Coach of the Year voter? … How are we allowing these people to have an impact?’
‘I told these boys I was bringing it today!’
