Dianna Russini didn’t know her MVP vote would be made public.
The Athletic’s senior NFL insider cast an MVP ballot for just the second time in her career, but unlike last year, her selection was disclosed. That led to an unexpected barrage of messages, particularly from those unhappy with her decision to vote for Lamar Jackson.
After Jackson, Russini’s ballot went as follows: Allen, Joe Burrow, Saquon Barkley, Jared Goff.
“I was out to dinner and my phone was blowing up with people in football very angry that I voted for people that I voted for,” she said during a recent Pardon My Take appearance. “That stunk. I wish I knew that because — it would not have changed my vote — but I love Josh Allen, and I am avoiding him for a really long time.”
Russini knows exactly what she did — and almost feels like she owes Allen an apology for it.
It’s not like she buried him on her MVP ballot, but the backlash she received for picking Jackson instead made her all too aware of what Aaron Rodgers called a “big problem” in NFL media. And while she’s sympathetic to Allen — who wound up winning the award — she isn’t exactly backing down from her decision.
“I still believe my vote was right,” she explained. “I was looking at it differently than I think the other voters were. I felt like there were games in which the defense in Buffalo helped Josh more in winning those games, whereas I felt like Lamar had to do it more on his own because he didn’t have that type of defense this year. That is kind of how I viewed it. Look, there were days I woke up and I thought it was Josh or days that I thought it was Lamar. And I stressed about it, but in the end, I did vote for Lamar.”
According to PFT Commenter (aka Eric Sollenberger), Russini told him the Tuesday before Super Bowl LIX that Jackson was 100 percent winning the 2024 NFL MVP. And it did appear to be that way after the two-time NFL MVP (2019, ’23) was named an AP first-team All-Pro for his efforts this past season.
She knew that the PMT co-host and Barstool Sports personality had a future bet on Jackson to win the MVP — and implored him not to worry about it.
Perhaps he should’ve worried a little.
In the end, Russini stuck to her guns. She may have faced backlash and just might be dodging Allen for the foreseeable future, but she never wavered in her belief that Jackson was the rightful MVP.
However, her colleagues in the NFL media felt differently.
She isn’t running from her vote, though, even if she is avoiding an awkward run-in with the Buffalo Bills QB.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.