Some of the things that The Athletic will learn when investigating its former NFL insider, Dianna Russini, will require work. Others were hiding in plain sight.
The new article from the New York Times focusing on Russini opens with a story she told in a January 2026 podcast appearance.
A police officer had pulled Russini over for texting and driving. (Her two young sons were in the car.) She told the officer that Bills coach Sean McDermott had been fired, and that she was trying to break the news.
When the officer said he was a fan of another team, she offered to get the coach of that team on the phone.
“Do you want to talk to the coach?” Russini said on the podcast. “You should talk to the coach. . . .
“I FaceTime the head coach. Head coach is in his office. He said, ‘What’s up?’ I go, ‘I just got pulled over and I just wanted you to meet my friend, Officer Joe.’”
The coach said to the officer, “You should let her go, she’s a good citizen.” Russini was not ticketed.
The Times reports that the coach in question wasn’t Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. The coach in question has not been identified.
Later, the article has a quote from a Times Company spokeswoman, who described the effort to get a coach to talk a police officer out of ticketing Russini as “unacceptable conduct.”
The Times also said it was not previously aware of the podcast appearance.
As mentioned earlier, the Times article feels like the appetizer for the upcoming disclosure of the results of the investigation conducted by The Athletic, which is owned and operated by the Times. The incident involving the FaceTime call to a coach for help in getting out of a ticket will undoubtedly be cited in the final report of the internal probe.
