Dianna Russini returns to sports media Wednesday, but analyst Jared Stillman is already pushing back. Stillman called her recent People magazine interview about the Mike Vrabel scandal “so shameful” and said she is not the victim. Russini stepped down April 14 after photos of her with the Patriots head coach surfaced. Both denied any impropriety. Her new weekly show, “The Russini Report,” premieres November 11 on BetUS. Stillman’s criticism lands one day before that debut, and it centers on a single question: what exactly did she say was a lie?
Analyst says Dianna Russini played the victim in her Mike Vrabel scandal interview
Stillman took aim at Russini’s People interview on “Stillman and Company,” and his complaint comes down to one gap. She never says what the lies were.Russini told the magazine that the story spun out of her control.“The lies became so out of control. This was a runaway train, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Once we realized nothing was going to stop this, it became unhealthy for us to read it because it wasn’t helping us heal. It was piling on and adding to what we were already dealing with,” she said.He argued she could have dodged the dishonesty talk by addressing what happened directly, and he used Vrabel as the contrast.“Dianna doesn’t even do that in her People magazine exclusive interview. Mike Vrabel addressed it; granted, in his own way. But when Vrabel gets up there, and he tells you that he’s hurt a lot of people that he’s really close with, he’s admitting that he did what he did,” the analyst said.Then he narrowed in on her wording. “Russini just says, ‘They lied.’ Lied about what, Dianna?”Russini also said it “quickly went from just one moment that people felt was true and erased years of work.” Stillman asked whether she meant only the Arizona photos. “One moment? The moment in Arizona? What about the moment in New York? What about all the other moments?” Older photos of the pair, taken March 11, 2020, at a New York City bar, resurfaced and were published in April.
Two very different paths after the photos
The fallout split in two directions.Vrabel stayed with the Patriots. He admitted to difficult conversations with his family, staff and players, took responsibility for creating a distraction and started counseling. He declined to get into the specifics of his relationship with Russini.Russini stayed away from sports media. The Athletic found her undisclosed relationship with Vrabel broke its standards, though it did not rule on whether it was romantic. She is back with a one-hour live NFL show on the BetUS TV website and the platform’s X account, built around gambling analysis, game previews and matchup breakdowns.Stillman was unmoved by her talk of family support. “This isn’t something that everybody else did,” he said. “This is something you did.”