Despite the tabloid headlines swirling around Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini, the NFL is adopting a strictly hand-off approach when it comes to teams making fun of each other during Thursday night’s schedule release.
The annual schedule release is the one day of the year when NFL teams are unofficially allowed to mock each other. With TMZ Sports and the New York Post still on the warpath, you’d think the league would step in to try to declare the Vrabel scandal off-limits. Right?
Wrong. The NFL is taking the opposite approach, sources tell Front Office Sports. The league is not reviewing videos in advance. Instead, clubs will continue to control the content of their memes and videos from start to finish. The young, aggressive, social media wags at all 32 clubs will be free to mock Vrabel and the Patriots if they wish.
Either way, executives from NFL headquarters are not getting involved in the annual Super Bowl of social media. Especially since Charles Barkley’s Inside the NBA already went there on ESPN by showing Vrabel and Russini in the pose made famous by the movie Titanic.
“This is the day when teams are licensed to poke fun at each other. The (Vrabel story) has become such a public matter that teams can take the shot. You may get a call from the Patriots. But the league is not going to get involved,” one source tells FOS. “The only time Park Avenue messages the teams is around labor, CBA, or the refs. The moments when they’re trying to negotiate—and they want everyone on message. If the Jets, Bills, or Chargers choose to ridicule Vrabel, that’s an issue between the teams. The league doesn’t need to mediate that.”
To this point, the NFL and its teams have tiptoed around the bombshell Vrabel story. But if there’s one franchise likely to weigh in, it’s the Chargers.
Over the years, the Bolts have become the acknowledged king of schedule release day, dropping killer videos lampooning former Jags coach Urban Meyer, Bills QB Josh Allen, and Chiefs stars Travis Kelce and Harrison Butker. And what do you know? The AFC Champion Pats will visit the Chargers at SoFi Stadium, only a few months after New England beat Los Angeles 16-3 in a Wild Card playoff game this January.
“The Chargers are masters at it. They don’t only take shots at teams; they take shots at individuals as well,” says another source.
Still, there’s no guarantee any NFL team—even the Chargers—will add to Vrabel and the Patriots’ current misery by taking potshots on Thursday night. Why? It has to do with the complex personal relationships between the league’s coaches and executives.
NFL head coaches respect each other. There are only 32 of them. They know they belong to one of the world’s most exclusive fraternities. Who’s to say Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh doesn’t lay down the law to his franchise and declare the Vrabel story taboo?
There’s also a strong “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” ethos within the country’s richest, most powerful league. Nobody knows what’s going on in coaches’ personal lives. A rival NFL team that throws shade at Vrabel and the Pats may get it back in spades when faced with their own tabloid scandal.
The Colts, for example, apologized last year after posting a Minecraft-themed video mocking Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill’s legal troubles. Within hours of posting the video on X/Twitter, the Colts took it down, admitting the “insensitive clip” crossed the line. The team also faced a threat from Microsoft due to copyright infringement.
Plus, these are not Bill Belichick’s dynastic Patriots anymore. The Hoodie’s Pats were widely loathed by other teams due to their six Super Bowl titles and history of skirting the rules. But Vrabel and fresh-faced QB Drake Maye are more lovable, so New England may not generate the same vitriol as it would in the past.
As one source put it to FOS: “Teams have to answer to one another. Coaches have to answer one another. People may have relationships with Vrabel, (Pats owner) Bob Kraft or (Pats executive vice president) Eliot Wolf. If you go there, people inside your own building mary take issue with you. And if you dish it out, you better be able to take it.”
