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Mike Vrabel walked into his first New England Patriots training camp press conference of the 2026 season cradling a small dog, and the play worked as well as any he drew up.
None of the roughly 20 questions reporters directed at the second-year head coach touched the Dianna Russini scandal that had consumed his offseason, as OutKick's Armando Salguero noted Friday.
The complication is that the offseason in question included a publicly reported cheating scandal severe enough to send Vrabel to rehab during the NFL Draft, cost Russini her career, and prompt her own employer, the New York Times, to publish a critical account of the episode.
The Pawtriots setup The dog was no accident. The Patriots run a program called "Pawtriots," now in its second year, that pairs the first day of training camp with a dog adoption event.
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