You would have thought that getting their ass handed to them in the Super Bowl would be the most embarrassing thing to happen to the New England Patriots this year. My dear reader, it turns out that would be a deeply, deeply faulty assumption. No, the team that gave you Spygate, Deflategate and Bob Kraft Hand Job-gate has once again chosen to show its ass to the whole world. And just before the NFL Draft, no less! How exciting!

The scandal this time centers around Pats head coach Mike Vrabel, who just this past season washed away the stench of Bill Belichick’s final years in Foxboro by winning the AFC title in just his second season on the job. He’s cultivated a “he’s your kind of asshole!” vibe that his players and the media appeared to find appealing. One specific member of the media, Dianna Russini of ESPN and then the Athletic, seems to have found the Vrabel aura more than just appealing. Two weeks ago, Page Six, the New York Post’s celebrity gossip arm, published photos of Russini and Vrabel — both of whom are married to other people, at least as of this writing — spending some quality time alone together at an adults-only resort in Sedona, Arizona. The photos didn’t show the pair kissing, but they certainly seemed to depict two people who were more than enamored of one another.

Without the kissing evidence, Vrabel initially brushed off the Post’s findings as “laughable,” as if it would be utterly ludicrous to think that a high-profile figure in the country’s most testosterone-driven sport could potentially enjoy sleeping with women he’s not married to. Meanwhile, Russini told Page Six that she and Vrabel were at the resort separately, with separate friends, saying in a statement, “The photos don’t represent the group of........

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