Exclusive photos appeared to show Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini holding hands and hugging at a luxury hotel in Sedona, Arizona, two weekends before the report was published. The images placed the Patriots coach and the NFL reporter at the Ambiente on Saturday, March 28, even as both said they were there with friends.
A Page Six source said Vrabel, 50, and Russini, 43, had breakfast on the hotel patio around 10:30 a.m., then spent about an hour together at the pool and in a hot tub. That same source said they were seen again that evening on the private rooftop of one of the hotel’s bungalows, where photos showed them hugging at sunset and weaving their fingers together while standing face-to-face. A source also said they briefly danced together.
The trip drew notice because the Ambiente is marketed as an adults-only romantic getaway and can run up to $2,160 a night. It also came as Vrabel and Russini were already visible figures in the NFL orbit: Vrabel took over as the Patriots’ top coach in January 2025 after playing eight seasons as a linebacker for the team, while Russini has covered the league for years, joining ’s SportsCenter in 2015 before moving to The Athletic in 2023 and launching Scoop City: Inside the NFL.
Both Vrabel and Russini said they were at the hotel with friends and said those friends were not visible in the pictures. A source close to Russini said she was staying there during a hiking trip with two female pals. One of Vrabel’s friends said Vrabel and another pal drove up to Sedona for the day and later returned to their own hotel about two hours away. Three other eyewitnesses told Page Six they did not see anyone else with Vrabel and Russini, and one said flatly, “No, he was with a girl.”
Vrabel had been in Arizona on Friday, March 27, for a scouting event at Arizona State University in Tempe before traveling 125 miles to the Ambiente. He later went on to the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix for an NFL Competition Committee meeting. Russini was among many NFL reporters at the Biltmore on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of the prior week when media had access to owners, executives and coaches, and The Athletic published a dispatch about those meetings on Thursday written by Russini and Jacob Robinson. The two also overlap professionally on the Patriots beat, which Russini has covered for more than a decade while Vrabel now leads a franchise that remains one of the league’s most watched. The question left by the photos is not whether they were in the same place, but why their version of that day in Sedona still clashes so sharply with what multiple witnesses said they saw.