Dianna Russini, Mike Vrabel reportedly ran competing pool party against Jay Glazer at NFL owners meeting

For the past several years, Fox’s Jay Glazer has given fans unique insight into NFL head coaches’ personalities by posting content from the poolside drinking party he hosts at league owners’ meetings each spring. And as the apparently long, winding saga around Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel continues to reveal new chapters, a new report suggests that shortly after the Arizona getaway that unraveled Russini’s career, she and the coach were seen hosting a party intended to compete with Glazer’s.

In the latest episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, host Pablo Torre reported, according to two sources around the league meetings, that Russini and Vrabel were indeed able to lure “a few” other coaches to their party.

“That pool, where Jay Glazer was hosting all of those NFL head coaches and others. Across the way from that same pool was Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel. And what she was doing, I am told, was effectively trying to host a rival office Christmas party,” Torre said.

“I can tell you that part of what the game is, that Dianna Russini was trying to play, was ‘What if I do the thing that Jay Glazer does quite successfully?’ And build a network of sources. Because what no one has ever denied or objected to is the ambition of Dianna Russini in trying to compete at this insane, crazy-making job of ‘insider.'”

The news not only reinforces the closeness between the two (as if that were needed at this point) but also shows that Russini and Vrabel were not exactly private about their close relationship with other NFL newsmakers. Of course, the situation also showcases the strange dynamics at play among insiders across sports, with Russini driven to recruit Vrabel to host coaches for a gathering that would itself be ethically questionable under the rules of The Athletic and its parent company, the New York Times Co.

While nobody ratted Russini or Vrabel out until Page Six published several rounds of photos showing the two together romantically across six years, Torre reported that the competing league meeting party did turn heads among some in the league.

“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, I am told, started talking about Vrabel and Russini,” Torre said.

“And this is before, days before, the photos broke in the New York Post. Which is to say, also, a thing I have found is that their friendship was not breaking news to the people at the NFL owners’ meetings. That in fact, they were out front, together, at this competing, aspirational party.”

We at Awful Announcing scoured the video that Jay Glazer shared from this year’s day-drinking party, which he says was attended by “28 of 32 coaches.” We did see a few groups of people in several locations around or near the pool, but we couldn’t visually identify either Russini or Vrabel. Of course, that doesn’t account for any time before or after the video was recorded either.

Since the original set of photos was published, Russini has resigned from The Athletic and deleted her social media presence. Vrabel told reporters this week that he will seek counseling and spend time away from the team.

But each new chapter of this story showcases not only Russini and Vrabel’s questionable judgment throughout the last several years, but also the nature of how relationships are built and intel is traded in the NFL and beyond.