This just keeps getting better.
Users over on X/Twitter are convinced that they’ve found a burner account belonging to embattled New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, as leaks continue to drop in the ongoing scandal surrounding his alleged affair with former NFL reporter for The Athletic Dianna Russini.
The whole thing first erupted back in April when Page Six shared photos of the two holding hands, hugging, and lounging in a pool together at an adults-only resort in Sedona, Arizona.
Obviously that’s a problem for a few reasons: Most importantly, they’re both married – and not to each other. And it was also apparently a concern for Russini’s employer, given the fact that her job is to cover the NFL and she was (allegedly) having a relationship with the head coach of one of the teams she’s tasked with covering.
After initially standing by their reporter, The Athletic later announced an investigation into the allegations, which led Russini to resign from the New York Times-owned publication. Vrabel, meanwhile, admitted to having some “difficult conversations” with his family, and missed the third day of the 2026 NFL Draft after announcing that he would be seeking counseling. (Apparently his marriage is worth a 4-7 round pick, but not a 1-3 rounder).
But since those initial photos, it’s been a constant leak of information and photos that have given us a better picture of the (alleged) relationship between the two.
There were photos of the two kissing at an NYC bar as far back as 2020, and an NFL employee alleging that they saw the two getting handsy at a bar earlier this year during the NFL combine. There was also a Spotify playlist uncovered by internet sleuths that was created by Russini and shared with somebody named “Mike” (which, to be clear, is not her husband’s name) that was created during a particularly tough losing streak for Vrabel while he was serving as head coach of the Tennessee Titans.
Russini was also forced to delete her Twitter after people kept digging up her old tweets that made things look worse and worse – like one she posted shortly after the birth of her son Michael in 2021 wondering about other “Michaels” in the NFL:
“Keep looking at my almost 4 day old son Michael while trying to figure out who are the best Michaels to ever play and coach in the NFL?”
While Russini may not be on Twitter though, some people are convinced that Vrabel might be defending himself using a burner account.
The account, with the handle @mike_masters199, first came to light yesterday after TMZ reported that Vrabel and Russini rented a private boat together in Cookeville, Tennessee back in June 2021 – while the then-ESPN reporter was pregnant with her first son, Michael.
TMZ shared photos of the waivers that they signed before heading out on the boat, and Vrabel even posed for a picture with the staff (remember, he was a pretty big deal in Tennessee at the time as the coach for the Titans), though he reportedly told them not to post it on social media.
And in case there was any confusion, TMZ’s source also clarified that it was just the two of them on the boat.
And one account in particular seemed especially upset that TMZ had released the story:
The account was created back in May of 2022 and changed its username in December 2025. All of the account’s tweets seem to be related to the Patriots, and lately it’s taken a special interest in defending Mike Vrabel:
And it also alludes to other NFL inside knowledge of dirt on other teams:
So it’s clearly Vrabel, right?
Wrong.
If you look back at the account’s tweets prior to the scandal, there’s one major clue that it’s probably not Vrabel.
Many tweets from the account appear to have been sent DURING Patriots games, like this one that was sent at 12:42 PM central during a game against the New Orleans Saints (which started at noon), for which Vrabel was on the sidelines and presumably not tweeting from a burner account:
In fact, there were several tweets that were fired off during that game:
And this one criticizing Drake Maye was sent during the Super Bowl:
So did the internet really discover Mike Vrabel’s burner account? It doesn’t appear that way, unless Vrabes is just firing off tweets from the sideline in the middle of the Super Bowl and other games.
As crazy as this whole thing has been though, it wouldn’t even be the most surprising revelation.
