Avoid the appearance of evil

Before I dive into the seemingly salacious saga involving New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and now-former Athletic sports reporter Dianna Russini, I’d like to discuss Mike Pence.

Back when he served as Donald Trump’s first vice president, Pence had a well-known rule he strictly adhered to: Taking a page from Billy Graham’s playbook, Pence never dined in public or took closed-door meetings with women who weren’t his wife, nor did he attend functions that served alcohol unless his wife Karen was present.

Left-leaning media outlets mocked him for it. Some, such as The Atlantic and Vogue, even accused Pence of sexism. They claimed he was treating women as temptresses rather than professional equals, denying them access to the type of one-on-one business meetings where, in Washington, D.C., men forge connections and strike deals that shape public policy. If Pence truly respected women, those publications argued, he’d grant them the same access he gave men, not act like part of an outdated old-boys network.

Ridiculed though Pence was, never did the former Indiana governor have to spend press conferences fending off swirling rumors of infidelity. Neither did Pence ever find himself accused of sexual harassment or any other form of sexual misconduct—and amid the #MeToo movement, which was in full-throated force at the time, if Pence had been so accused, mainstream media would have taken his accuser at her word and denied him any presumption of innocence. (Just ask Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.)

Pence’s conduct stands in stark contrast to the still-unfolding story of Vrabel and Russini, whose attempts to duck the issue of their alleged adultery have only made their denials seem suspect.

Vrabel is fresh off leading New England—with whom he won three Super Bowls as a linebacker in the early 2000s—to a Super Bowl appearance in his first season as the Patriots’ head coach. Russini is an attractive female reporter who, until recently, served as a National Football League insider for The Athletic, the New York Times-owned sports news outlet, and covered the NFL at ESPN for several years before that. Both Vrabel and Russini are married—and not to each other.

Earlier this month, Page Six, the New York Post’s celebrity gossip section, published eyebrow-raising photos of Vrabel and Russini at a private resort in Arizona, where the NFL annual meetings took place. One photo showed Vrabel and Russini sharing a hot tub. Another showed them clasping hands and looking at each other—seemingly adoringly—on a bungalow rooftop.

As one might expect, the photos went viral and got journalists’ tongues wagging. And as one might expect, those journalists started asking questions—which is, of course, their job.

In Russini’s case, some of those journalists included her bosses at The Athletic, who began investigating whether she, ahem, cozied up to NFL coaches and executives to gain inside scoops. Russini responded by promptly going into damage control mode: “Like most journalists in the NFL, reporters interact with sources away from stadiums and other venues,” she said in a statement.

Vrabel told the Post, “These photos show a completely innocent interaction, and any suggestion otherwise is laughable.”

Soon, however, the heat the photos generated became too much for Vrabel and Russini. Roughly a week after they surfaced, Russini resigned from The Athletic. She did so defiantly, though, declaring that she “refused to lend” the emerging narrative “further oxygen or let it define me or my career.”

Her declaration aside, whether she likes it or not, Russini’s professional reputation has already been damaged—perhaps irreversibly.

As for Vrabel, the coach gave a brief statement to reporters on Tuesday that mentioned some “difficult conversations” he has had with family and players but did not directly mention the alleged affair with Russini. Regardless of whom New England takes with its No. 1 pick in today’s NFL draft, you can bet that what should be the biggest day of that player’s life so far will take a back seat to discussions about the fallout from the photos.

In a way, I find the attention devoted to Vrabel’s and Russini’s suspected unfaithfulness to their respective spouses refreshing. In a day and age where society treats sex, marriage, and divorce all too casually, it conveys the message that adultery is still wrong. God thought ill enough of it to declare those guilty of it deserving of death (Leviticus 20:10). And even granting that Jesus defended an adulterous woman from a mob of men wanting to stone her and declined to condemn her, He didn’t repeal the Seventh Commandment in doing so. Out of unmerited kindness and mercy, Jesus told the woman, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:1-11).

The King James Version of the Bible tells believers, “Abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22). That’s sound advice. Vrabel and Russini would have done well to heed it.