It’s been exactly one month since Mike Vrabel said the photos of him and Dianna Russini at an adults-only resort in Sedona showed “a completely innocent interaction” and that any suggestion otherwise was “laughable.”
Jim Rome doesn’t think it’s laughable.
Rome weighed in Thursday on his eponymous show, calling Vrabel’s April 7 statement one of the most ill-fated denials in recent memory and noting that the story, rather than fading, has grown more detailed with every passing week.
“The problem for [Robert] Kraft is that it’s not going away,” Rome said. “And there’s nothing he can do to make it go away. In fact, it’s not even dying down, and it’s already been a month. Exactly a month, in fact, since Vrabel issued one of the most ill-fated denials of all time. ‘These photos show a completely innocent interaction, and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. This doesn’t deserve any further response.’ Not only did the public disagree that the photos didn’t deserve any further response, they are refusing to move on from this entire topic. Forget not deserving any further response. The public’s like, this deserves our full attention indefinitely.”
Just this week alone, TMZ published records showing that Vrabel and Russini privately rented a boat together in Putnam County, Tennessee, in June 2021 — just the two of them, for two to three hours on the water — while Russini was visibly pregnant with her first child. A day later, TMZ tried to tamp down the rumor that Russini named her firstborn son — named Michael — after Vrabel, citing “sources close to the situation” who said the child was named after Russini’s brother.
“It’s like a 2026 gold rush, and everybody’s out here mining for their nugget, trying to strike it rich,” Rome said. “And as long as more and more gold is discovered — gold like them renting a boat while she was pregnant, and footage of it is revealed — it just makes you wonder when it no longer becomes viable for this guy to lead that football team.”
The story doesn’t have to reach some dramatic conclusion to create a problem. It just has to keep going. And right now, a month in, with new details still surfacing and no bottom in sight, there is no indication it is going to stop. Rome’s gold rush analogy is apt: as long as people keep finding gold, people will keep mining. The boat rental is this week’s nugget. There will be another one next week.
Vrabel’s best case at this point is that the story slowly fades as training camp approaches and football content fills the void. His worst case is that it doesn’t, and that Robert Kraft spends the summer watching his head coach become the story instead of his team. One of those outcomes is still possible. The other is already happening.
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.