News moves markets. Specifically, prediction markets.
Five days ago, Kalshi had Mike Vrabel as having a 77-percent chance to be the coach of the Patriots as of Week 1. As of this posting, the number has plummeted to 64 percent.
The dip has happened in the wake of the TMZ report that Vrabel and NFL reporter Dianna Russini rented a boat in Tennessee during June 2021, when she was pregnant.
Wednesday’s news has not impacted the odds at Polymarket. The chances of Vrabel exiting by December 31 have actually dropped since May 1, from 23 percent to 19 percent. Since Tuesday night, the number has fallen nine points, from 28 percent.
While it’s unclear whether this specific development will have any tangible impact on his status, it underscores the reality that there may be more developments. At some point, the next nugget could be the one that forces him to step aside.
Not as a football matter, but as a family matter. With a decision to participate in counseling making him unavailable to the Patriots for the third day of the 2026 NFL draft, the situation could reach a critical mass at any time — one that could make his full-time, all-in employment as an NFL head coach unsustainable.
Our guess (and it’s just a guess) is that Vrabel would, if/when it gets to be too much to continue, take a leave of absence for 2026, with the door open to a return in 2027.
The Patriots clearly don’t want to lose him. At some point, however, the cascade of reports could make it in everyone’s best interests for Vrabel to step aside for a season, to do whatever is necessary to resolve the situation with his family, and to return with a clean slate next year.
It’s impossible to know whether the situation involving Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and NFL reporter Dianna Russini will result in Vrabel stepping down as coach of the Patriots (or, possibly, taking a leave of absence for the 2026 season), because it’s always possible that more information will come to light.
More information has come to light.
TMZ reports that Vrabel and Russini rented a boat together in June 2021, in Tennessee. The report includes a copy of the waiver they both signed, and a photo taken by Vrabel with staff members at the boat rental company. (Russini, per the report, declined to be photographed with staff.)
In June 2021, Russini — who is married — was pregnant with her first child.
The new report adds to a tapestry of evidence that started with photos of Vrabel and Russini at an adults-only resort in Sedona, Arizona in March 2026. Later photos surfaced of Vrabel and Russini at a New York City bar in March 2020, and at a Mississippi casino in January 2024.
What else is out there? Outlets like TMZ and the New York Post, among others, are surely looking for it.
The overriding question is whether, and when, Russini will tell her story. If/when she does, one line of questioning will focus on the time they rented a boat, while she was married to someone else.
The most important question is whether Vrabel will be able to continue to coach the Patriots. He missed the third day of the 2026 NFL draft to attend “counseling.” Every additional piece of evidence that confirms the existence and duration of the relationship could the thing that forces Vrabel to step aside, for the 2026 season or perhaps longer.
The criminal trial against free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs played out on Monday and Tuesday. It ended with an acquittal.
Now that the case is over, there are a few things to be drawn from the entire experience. Here are five of them.
1. The prosecution failed to properly vet the case.
The case didn’t fail because of the story the alleged victim, Mila Adams, told on the witness stand at trial regarding the alleged assault. The rest of her testimony undermined her credibility, to the point that the jury rejected her story as to the most important aspect of the case.
The prosecution knew or should have known there were flaws, both as to her broader story and as to her ability to sell it. They should have pressed her aggressively during their interviews of her, in an effort to ensure she would hold up under cross-examination — and, more importantly, to develop true conviction (or not) that her story would be believed by strangers to the situation.
Based on her testimony, Adams arguably didn’t behave in the days and hours after the alleged incident like someone who had been slapped and strangled. She had no obvious injuries in the immediate aftermath of the alleged incident; if she did, she failed to take even one photo or video of them with her phone.
Most importantly, her financial motivations were unclear. She claimed she had been underpaid during her time as Diggs’s personal, live-in chef. The evidence presented by the defense suggested otherwise. Also, she tried too hard to make it look like she wanted no compensation from Diggs for the alleged assault and strangulation. Her way of dealing with that wrinkle was to periodically attribute the involvement of others on her behalf as part of an effort to get workers’ compensation, even though she had no injury that prevented her from going about her normal activities — such as working.
These are all things the prosecution could have, and should have, realized without forcing Diggs to incur the expense, annoyance, and uncertainty of a trial. Undertaking that effort should be part of the obligation a prosecutor has to the people.
A police report can be filed by anyone, about anything. It’s ultimately for law enforcement, as controlled by the local prosecutor, to exercise their very broad discretion as to who does and doesn’t get criminally charged with prudence and justice.
Diggs, based on the evidence that came to light at trial, never should have been charged. He never should have been charged because the prosecution never should have believed it was going to convince a jury that Diggs was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. The prosecution failed to properly prepare the alleged victim.
Any witness who testifies at trial has to fully understand how the process will unfold. Mila Adams apparently had no clue that it would be far more exacting than showing up, giving her version of the key facts, and leaving.
She hadn’t been prepared to address in a persuasive way the obvious weaknesses in her testimony. Why didn’t she immediately pick up her phone and take pictures of any redness or swelling from allegedly being slapped and strangled? Why didn’t she say something to the people she was with later that day, or the next day? Why did she wait two weeks to go to police? Why was she working with others to seek money from Diggs?
It was as if she was surprised by the fact that she’d be questioned aggressively on those issues. At one point, the presiding judge had to tell her (without the jury present) how the question-and-answer process works — and to say that her entire testimony “may be stricken” if she continues to not answer questions and/or to attempt to insert unrelated narratives into her answers.
While it’s possible the prosecutors did everything in their power to get Adams to understand what would happen and they believed she understood, her performance shows either they didn’t properly prepare her for the experience and/or they grossly misjudged what would happen when it was time to face cross-examination.
3. The prosecutor highlighted the alleged victim’s poor performance.
In perhaps the most stunning moment of the entire trial, prosecutor Drew Virtue began his closing argument by admitting that Mila Adams did a poor job on the witness stand.
“Was Ms. Adams a perfect witness? No. She was argumentative, avoidave [sic], difficult. But does that mean you should throw away everything she said? No,” Virtue said. “You don’t have to like Ms. Adams. You don’t have to like the way she testified today and yesterday. But you do have to give her and her testimony the weight that it deserves.”
The weight it deserved was overrun by the things that made her an imperfect witness, and by the things that made her and/or her performance potentially unlikable by a jury.
Maybe it was Virtue’s way of making things right. Maybe he knew, after watching the cross-examination of Mila Adams, that Diggs should not be convicted.
If that was the case, Virtue should have dismissed the charges before letting the jury deliberate.
If Virtue was indeed still trying to secure a conviction, it was an abysmal closing argument. The best fact in the Commonwealth’s favor — that Adams said she urinated while being strangled — wasn’t even mentioned during the closing. This specific detail doesn’t seem to be something a person making it all up would think to add to the story. An aggressive and impassioned plea to the jury to focus on that one critical fact and to ignore the noise about unrelated issues could have made a difference.
We’ll never know whether it would have, because Virtue made no effort to try to argue the case that way.
4. The trial was boring.
Most jurors have had no prior exposure to the trial process. Their expectations are largely if not exclusively shaped by movies and TV shows they have seen. That places a burden on the lawyers in any case to try to meet those expectations — by making the process interesting and, ultimately, entertaining.
None of the four lawyers involved in the Diggs trial seemed to appreciate that basic reality. The jurors need to have their attention grabbed by the performance of the lawyers. They need to have a reason to want to pay close attention to whatever happens next. The lawyer’s job is to carefully fashion every aspect of the trial — from jury selection to opening statements to witness questioning to closing arguments — with an eye toward capturing and keeping the full and constant attention of the jury, and on establishing and maintaining their trust.
The trial was, frankly, boring. While it’s not supposed to be entertainment, the more it feels like entertainment, the more the jury will pay attention to what’s happening and, ultimately, answer the plea of the lawyer who has won their trust when the lawyer asks them to deliver the desired verdict.
5. Professional athletes need to be careful about who they surround themselves with.
Lawyer Mitch Schuster, who represented Diggs, said in a statement issued after the acquittal that “professional athletes have a target on their back.” The target comes from their money and fame. And they need to act accordingly.
Players need to be very careful about the people they welcome into their inner circle. Adams served as Diggs’s personal chef. She lived in his house. He surely wouldn’t have done that if he knew she’d eventually file a police report against him, especially if (as his lawyers claimed) her allegations were false.
Adams described the environment in Diggs’s house as a “circus.” She was part of it. And she nearly brought down the big top, once she became motivated (for whatever reason) to make a police report that resulted in a felony case to be pursued against him.
Is it easy to ensure the various members of the inner circle can be trusted? No. That doesn’t make it any less important. Just as the prosecution failed to properly vet Adams as a witness, Diggs failed to properly vet her as someone who could be trusted to work and to live in his home.
That’s the biggest takeaway for Diggs and any other professional athlete. Be careful about the people who are around you all the time. They’re the ones who will be the most likely to eventually say you did something you didn’t do.
Tuesday’s acquittal of free-agent receiver Stefon Diggs on charges of strangulation and assault ends the criminal case against him. It does not end the NFL’s investigation of the situation.
From an NFL spokesperson: “We have been monitoring all developments in the matter which remains under review of the Personal Conduct Policy.”
The NFL applies a much lower standard of proof, when it comes to the evaluation of allegations of domestic violence or other conduct that falls under the Personal Conduct Policy. Tuesday’s verdict means only that the prosecution failed to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.
Despite the obvious issues with the testimony of the alleged victim, Mila Adams, as to various topics related to the alleged incident, her testimony regarding the alleged incident was clear and unequivocal, and unrebutted. If she chooses to cooperate, the NFL could interview her and come to its own conclusion as to whether she was telling the truth as to the incident itself — despite the truth-telling capabilities that otherwise emerged while she was being cross-examined.
Also, Diggs exercised his constitutional right to not testify. He will not have that ability, if/when the NFL seeks to interview him.
However it goes from here, the acquittal doesn’t end the inquiry. And it wouldn’t be the first time that a player was disciplined despite not being charged criminally. In 2022, the NFL suspended Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson 10 games even though he was not indicted by a grand jury in Texas.
Despite the flaws inherent to the NFL’s in-house justice system (including the lack of subpoena power), the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination does not apply to the NFL’s investigative process. The jury didn’t hear his story. If the NFL wants to hear it, the NFL will.
North Carolina, under Bill Belichick, fancies itself the NFL’s 33rd team. The better description is the NCAA’s equivalent of Belichick’s Patriots.
Without, to date, the winning.
Former UNC quarterback Gio Lopez, who played for Belichick in his first year as a college coach, has transferred to Wake Forest. To hear it from Lopez, it sounds less like a transfer and more like an escape.
“Back at the other school, it felt like there’s no air,” Lopez recently said, via Logan Lazarczyk of SI.com. “Here, it’s fun again. They’re moving us in the right direction, energized, and guys are enjoying football. It’s like fresh air. I’d never had to respond to tough situations like that on that loud of a scale.”
What was the biggest difference about playing football under Belichick?
“It was more like work,” Lopez said. “After that first game, it felt like getting through the day. You don’t want to live like that, where you’re up at night thinking about the next day.”
Gio Lopez’s father, Barney Lopez, has offered more specific commentary regarding the manner in which the team was run. And regarding the feedback Gio received in real time.
“You were ridiculed if you didn’t do it exactly the way he was told,” Barney Lopez said. “You could be at the dang line, see the play is about to be blown up, but if you try to call it off or audible, you were ridiculed.”
The end result was that Gio Lopez no longer enjoyed playing.
“Gio has always loved the game of football, and he was losing the love for it when he was over there [at North Carolina],” Barney Lopez said.
Gio Lopez started 11 games in 2025, his first and only season at North Carolina. It will be interesting to see what Belichick and/or G.M. Mike Lombardi will have to say about Lopez’s comments.
Our guess is that Belichick would grumble something unintelligible before saying he’s only focused on the guys who are on the team. Lombardi possibly would find a way to throw shade at Lopez indirectly, saying something about how NFL-style football isn’t for everyone and some guys respond the right way to coaching from the greatest coach of all time and others respond a different way.
And then Lombardi would probably try to find a way to blame it all on the media.
Here’s the key. Belichick’s methods work if he wins. Because winning validates a coach’s approach. Players who complain about how a coach goes about coaching a team into becoming a winning program come off as whiners, whatever the techniques.
When a team underachieves, the feedback from the players helps explain why things went sideways.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether Belichick and Lombardi will be able to recruit enough good players to Chapel Hill. Without good players, no college program has a chance to compete at a high level.
But an important question will remain, regardless of the quality of the roster. Do Belichick’s methods work on college-aged players? Could the Patriot Way at the NCAA level make a potentially good team worse, or better?
College football players have more power and freedom than ever. They no longer have to tolerate an emotionless taskmaster. And, for those who eventually make it to the NFL, they can worry about it feeling like a job later. Kids who are 18, 19, and 20 prefer to behave accordingly, at least some of the time.
For now, all we know is what has transpired. Belichick’s first season at North Carolina fell far short of expectations. Even with 2025 lowering the bar for 2026, Belichick will have plenty of work to do in order to stick around for a third year.
