Patriots Clips
Elijah Mitchell, a running back whose promising rookie season in 2021 now feels like a distant memory, has been cut by the Patriots.
Mitchell was only with the Patriots briefly last season and never appeared in a game for them. The team announced it was cutting him on Tuesday.
A 2021 sixth-round draft pick of the 49ers, Mitchell looked tremendous as a rookie, totaling 1,100 yards from scrimmage in 11 games.
But in Week One of his second season, Mitchell suffered a knee injury that knocked him out for most of the year, and he has struggled to stay healthy since. He missed more time in 2023, missed the entire 2024 season with a hamstring injury, and then signed with the Chiefs last year and only played in one game before he was released.
Mitchell may be able to find some team willing to give him a shot on a 90-player training camp roster, but it’s fair to question whether he’ll ever play in the regular season again, as a player who once looked like he had a bright future deals with the harsh reality of how short NFL careers can be.
On Monday, the New York Post published photos taken of Patriots coach Mike Vrabel during the third day of the 2026 NFL draft. On Tuesday, TMZ took it to another level.
TMZ has posted a video taken by a “photographer” (who isn’t a TMZ employee), which included a stream of increasingly aggressive questions directed to Vrabel at the Salt Lake City airport on Saturday.
Here are the questions, regarding the aftermath of the publication of multiple sets of photos featuring Vrabel and NFL reporter Dianna Russini:
“How are you holding up, man?”
“Look, there’s been just a lot of talk that there’s just a little bit of a double standard here, and I just wanted your take on that.”
“Are you doing alright?”
“Are you powering through?”
“Are you and your wife hoping to work it out, Mr. Vrabel?”
“Look, I’m just gonna — I’ve got to say that there’s some talk that maybe you should step down. It’s a distraction to the Patriots. I wanted your opinion on that, sir.”
“What does accountability look like for you at this point? Sir? Head coach of the Patriots. Big distraction here. Sir, is there any comment at all?”
“Sir, do you have the support of the Patriots? Full support? Any comment? Anything to say to Patriot Nation, at all?”
Vrabel said very little during the exchange. The “photographer” was clearly trying to bait Vrabel into a verbal confrontation, or maybe more.
The message is that this may be the new normal for Vrabel, at least for now.
His wife, Jen, has become a target for the paparazzi, too. TMZ, in a separate item, has posted photos of her, taken Tuesday at the Salt Lake City airport.
Three weeks to the day after the initial photos of Vrabel and Russini were published by the Post, the situation continues to generate headlines. The initial denials surely fueled the effort to get more information.
At some point along the way, it crossed over into something that will attract significant attention — unless the story finally fizzles out.
The Patriots have taken the next step toward keeping cornerback Christian Gonzalez in New England for years to come.
Gonzalez officially had his fifth-year option picked up today, according to Adam Schefter of ESPN.
That’s no surprise, but it would be a major surprise if Gonzalez actually plays on his fifth-year option, which would be an $18.1 million salary in 2027. More likely, the Patriots and Gonzalez will agree to a long-term contract extension this year.
The 23-year-old Gonzalez was the Patriots’ first-round pick in 2023 and has played very well through the first three seasons of his NFL career. He’ll likely sign one of the most lucrative contracts in NFL history for a cornerback.
Patriots tight end Hunter Henry and linebacker Robert Spillane both fielded questions about head coach Mike Vrabel’s messaging to the team when they held press conferences from the team’s facility on Tuesday.
Multiple media outlets have posted pictures of Vrabel and reporter Dianna Russini interacting in multiple situations away from work over many years over recent weeks and Vrabel was not with the team during the final day of the draft in order to seek counseling and be with his family, but both Henry and Spillane said that the situation has not impacted the team’s focus on work during their offseason program.
“Coach coaches football and he keeps the main thing, the main thing,” Spillane said. “I know he’s dealing with personal issues, but when we’re in the building, we speak football.”
Henry said he thought Vrabel did “a great job” addressing players about the situation and has been “the same Vrabes” when the team has been in the facility. He also said that “everybody’s focused on the task at hand” as they prepare for the 2026 season.
“Obviously I know you guys want to hear about everything that’s going on,” Henry said. “To be honest with you, I’m focused on what we got going on right now in this building, with this team. Obviously had a long season last year, quick turnaround into the offseason, we’re in a new building. And every year is a new year, so we’re trying to build this team, we’re trying to come together, so I’m just focused on the guys in this locker room, and trying to build it from the ground up again. We have a long journey ahead of us; we have to start somewhere, so we’re starting right now.”
There will be many more opportunities for Patriots players to be asked about Vrabel in the days and weeks to come. The answers will likely be variations on the ones that Henry and Spillane offered on Tuesday as long as no future developments lead to a change in Vrabel’s status at any point this offseason.
ESPN won’t comment on whether it will be reviewing the reporting of former ESPN (and The Athletic) reporter Dianna Russini, given the photos published last week of Russini with Patriots coach Mike Vrabel in March 2020. That won’t stop others from reviewing her reporting as to matters relating to Vrabel’s team at the time.
As it relates to the 2021 trade that sent receiver Julio Jones from the Falcons to the Titans, it’s fair to wonder whether the reporting was calculated to help Tennessee secure the player under the most favorable terms.
Tony Farmer, who has been extensively covering the situation on Twitter, has found another report that objectively merits scrutiny.
As Farmer notes, Russini reported — only four days after the March 2020 photos reportedly were taken — that the Titans were “not interested” in quarterback Tom Brady, and that they were instead focused on extending the contract of quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who had been named the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2019.
While this item lacks the potential strategic benefits to the Titans of the Julio Jones reporting, it’s another bread crumb on a trail that people are now examining. And it’s fair to question whether the Titans were simply putting a positive P.R. spin on the possibility that the Brady had said “no thanks” to the Titans before the Titans created the impression that they were saying “no thanks” to Brady.
Although the 2020 negotiating window had not yet opened, rampant Brady tampering was happening. Teams were talking to him (and about him) before the official window for talking to him (or about him) had opened. It’s not unreasonable to think that, by March 15, he had crossed Tennessee off the list.
For now, it’s another piece of a puzzle that spans at least six years. And it underscores the reality that the NFL insider game isn’t about gumshoe reporting. It’s about leveraging the right relationships in order to be in position to be handed key pieces information, sometimes in ways that potentially benefit the source.
This latest nugget also helps explain ESPN’s relative silence regarding the entire story. ESPN largely ignored it until it had no choice but to cover it. While some have suggested it’s a result of the NFL’s recent acquisition of a 10-percent stake in ESPN, it’s possible ESPN doesn’t want to face the question of what it knew, and when it knew it.
In the aftermath of the April 7 publication by the New York Post of photos featuring Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and NFL reporter Dianna Russini at a resort in Arizona, Vrabel has become the subject of a search for any existing images. And for the discovery of any new ones.
The Post has obtained photographs of Vrabel in the Salt Lake City airport. Per the report, the photos were taken on Saturday. He was alone at the time, shopping in one of the stores in the terminal.
Saturday, of course, was the third day of the draft. Vrabel announced last week that he’d be absent from the draft room for “counseling, starting this weekend.” On Saturday, ESPN reported that he’d be in “constant contact” with the Patriots during the third day of the draft, before retracting it.
As of early 2025, Vrabel owned a home in Park City, Utah.
We’ll defer any speculation or guesswork to others. The facts are the facts, if the facts as reported by the Post are accurate. The biggest takeaway is that Vrabel — who is very hard to miss — will now have eyes (and cameras) on him wherever he goes. Until the current situation dissolves to background noise, if then.
The Patriots released wide receiver John Jiles and tight end Marshall Lang on Monday, the team announced.
Jiles, 25, spent the past two seasons on the New England practice squad, and he signed a futures contract with the Patriots on Feb. 10. He has never played a regular-season game.
Jiles entered the NFL as a rookie free agent in 2024, signing with the Giants.
Lang, 24, had two stints on the New England practice squad last season, and he also spent time on the Seahawks’ practice squad.
Lang entered the NFL as a rookie free agent out of Northwestern in 2025, signing with the Seahawks. Seattle released him out of the preseason.
He appeared in 47 games during his college career and finished with 48 receptions for 491 yards and four touchdowns.
On Saturday, Patriots coach Mike Vrabel wasn’t with the team for the third day of the draft. On Monday, Vrabel is back with the team.
Via Phil Perry of NBC Sports Boston, Vrabel has returned to work with the Patriots.
It ends the chapter but doesn’t close the book on the controversy that erupted 20 days ago. Based on things Vrabel said during a pair of short media appearances last week, it’s possible that he’ll be absent again for counseling in the coming days and weeks.
And the decision not to be present for rounds four through seven of the selection process continues to be unusual, to say the least. It’s a fairly important day on the offseason calendar. Also, it was a Saturday.
Why not Monday? As in this Monday, after the dust settled on the final day of the draft and the mad scramble for undrafted free agents. As Patriots V.P. of player personnel Eliot Wolf said last week, Vrabel is a “tremendous recruiter.” The Patriots didn’t have those skills available to them when trying to extract commitments from players who weren’t going to be drafted.
Overall, the story itself has died down. The Patriots and Vrabel have stopped creating new developments that demand coverage. Neither the New York Post nor TMZ have published new reports or photos in recent days.
Even if the parties involved provide no further short-term oxygen, there’s always a chance something else will happen. And even if nothing else happens, it’s a situation that won’t quickly be forgotten — and that will hover over the Patriots for the balance of the offseason.
Last year, North Carolina G.M. Mike Lombardi crowed that the Tar Heels were the NFL’s 33rd franchise. The other 32 had no interest in any of their draft-eligible players.
None of the players from the first year of the Bill Belichick tenure at Chapel Hill were among the 257 draft picks from the 2026 selection process.
None. As in not one. And they arrived in time to take advantage of the transfer portal to find one-year players who would then exit for the NFL. Given that it was too late to put together a strong class of incoming freshmen, they were even more likely to seek and find established players.
That was the basic problem with the program in 2025. They didn’t have enough good players. And it was Lombardi’s job to find them.
Between finding them and coaching them up, Belichick and company didn’t do enough to get any of them drafted.
The NFL’s biggest story of the month — which has crossed over to national news, morning shows, and late-night TV — had a fairly big development on Saturday, when Patriots coach Mike Vrabel skipped the third day of the draft to attend counseling.
On Thursday, Patriots V.P. of player personnel Eliot Wolf explained that the draft room would be missing Vrabel’s “leadership” and “presence,” along with his skills as a “tremendous recruiter” of undrafted free agents.
During Saturday’s draft coverage on ESPN, Peter Schrager said this: “I’ve been told, from Patriot sources, that they are in constant contact with Vrabel throughout the day.”
That was a surprising nugget, to say the least. If Vrabel is skipping the third day of the draft for counseling, being in “constant contact” with the Patriots would undermine the basic purpose of being away from the team.
Later, Schrager retracted the report. Even if he didn’t call it a retraction.
“Following up on the Vrabel report, it was my understanding that Coach Vrabel was going to be in contact with the staff via phone/text, but I’ve learned that in the end, both Vrabel and the team ultimately chose not to interrupt him and his family during Day 3 of the Draft,” Schrager tweeted.
It’s a huge difference to go from “they are in constant contact” to “they are having no contact whatsoever.” So either the report was wrong — or it was right and the Patriots realized that it was the latest example of piss-poor P.R. and scrambled to clean it up.
Either way, here’s what Wolf told reporters on Saturday, from the transcript distributed by the team.
Q: “Were you in contact with Mike at all today, and if so, how often were you guys in contact?”
A: “So, last night we kind of talked through things and made the decision that the time away really needs to be time away, so we were not in contact with Mike today other than some just, ‘Hope everything’s going OK’ kind of texts early this morning.”
Q: “And just to follow up, when you talked to him last night when Day 2 ended, what kind of message did he leave you guys with headed into today?”
EW: “Just words of encouragement. He knows our process, and again, we talked about what kind of players we needed to add. We knew what kind of players that he liked, and obviously we drafted some of the guys that he had an affinity for today.”
So it sounds like the claim that the Patriots “are in constant contact” with Vrabel was not accurate. Given the overall size and sensitivity of the story, that’s a pretty significant mistake for ESPN to make, to say the least.
