Patriots coach Mike Vrabel decided to have a press conference today, addressing the media for the first time since those eyebrow-raising photos of him and now former NFL insider Dianna Russini were published. What did Vrabel want to tell everyone? It's not really clear based on what he actually said.
Vrabel started the press conference by issuing a classic non-denial denial, never addressing the photos directly. All that was made apparent is that he has had "difficult conversations" with the team and his family, and that he will "attack each day with humility and focus." Here's the meat of it:
I’ve had some difficult conversations with people that I care about, with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. You know, we believe in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me, that starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. You never want to be the cause of a distraction. And when I—those are comments and questions that I’ve answered for the team, with the team, we’ll keep those private and to ourselves.
OK, thanks coach. No further questions, I guess.
Vrabel was always going to get off relatively easy here, because for as much as organizations hate distractions, they make a lot of exceptions for winning. Still, it's interesting to note how much Vrabel's tone has changed since he was first asked to comment on the photos by Page Six. It's a long, humbling walk from "These photos show a completely innocent interaction and any suggestion otherwise is laughable" to "I’ve had some difficult conversations with people that I care about." That shift can surely be chalked up to the fact that Russini and Vrabel's original version of events hasn't stood up to much scrutiny.
Anyway, it is particularly disheartening to watch Vrabel give a mealy mouthed and timid non-denial, as though there is no expectation he answer for any of this, and realize that this is probably as bad as it's going to get for him. While Russini is being excoriated online, Vrabel has the luxury to yada-yada his misbehavior and brush off accountability for the most part. A bunch of platitudes about hard talks with the team and his family, a couple football-guy buzzwords... and we're out. Back to football.
