Generally, when a story with scandalous overtones makes its way through the NFL landscape, one of the things that fans of the Minnesota Vikings have a tendency to think is, “Well, at least our team wasn’t involved.”
In the case of what has been one of the bigger stories of this past offseason, it turns out that we just didn’t wait quite long enough to come to that conclusion.
A story surfaced earlier this week that Dianna Russini, the former NFL writer for The Athletic, had used her connections to FaceTime a current NFL coach in order to get herself out of a traffic ticket back in January. Now, I’m not going to rehash everything that led to her becoming the former NFL writer for the Athletic. . .you’ve almost certainly heard the story by now. . .but suffice to say that getting out of a traffic ticket is, at worst, the second-most egregious thing that she’s used those connections for.
As it turns out, however, the coach that she allegedly used her contacts with in order to get out of that traffic ticket was none other than our favorite team’s head coach, Kevin O’Connell. And she didn’t actually FaceTime him, but rather showed the officer that pulled her over a text conversation between her and O’Connell. We’ll get to some of that here in a bit.
The story, per Pro Football Talk, goes that Russini was breaking the story about the Buffalo Bills firing coach Sean McDermott and spending a lot of time on her phone while she was driving. She then tells the officer that she was talking to former New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll, who she said was interested in the job.
Russini then asks if the officer is a fan of the Giants or the Jets, to which the officer replies that he is neither and that he is, “unfortunately”. . .his words. . .a fan of the Vikings. At that point, Russini shows the officer her text messages with O’Connell.
And then, just for fun, I guess, she decides to throw in, “their quarterback sucks.”
I can understand Russini not being a J.J. McCarthy fan. After all, McCarthy and his girlfriend/fiancee have been together and faithful to each other since they were in high school, so Russini hating him absolutely tracks. But I digress.
After that, the officer goes back to his vehicle and, upon returning to Russini’s vehicle, lets her know that he’s just going to let her off with a warning.
Now, while this does nothing to dissuade anyone from the notion that Russini’s ethics are somewhere between “lacking” and “non-existent,” it does make you wonder whether or not there’s a connection between some of her past reporting on the Vikings and her now-obvious connection to coach O’Connell.
As both Adam Patrick of the Viking Age and our friend Thor Nystrom have speculated, Russini was heavily reporting that the Vikings were pursuing Aaron Rodgers last season, a move that was reportedly vetoed by then-GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. When Adofo-Mensah was fired in January, Russini was the first to report that he had taken paternity leave and, after receiving backlash, walked it back a bit, pointing out that the Vikings had been supportive of that leave. Could Kevin O’Connell have told her that the Vikings gave him the go-ahead to take that leave of absence?
Moreover, could this potentially put any sort of strain on the relationship between O’Connell and McCarthy? O’Connell has said that the quarterback competition is an open and free one, but in light of all of this, could this perhaps leave a different impression? After all, if it was O’Connell who was, potentially, pushing for a more (allegedly) “viable” veteran option at quarterback last offseason, what does it say that there’s now one in camp this season?
All I know is that this team absolutely, positively did not need to be dragged into this garbage right now. But, dragged into it they have been, and now, hopefully, it won’t have any noticeable effect on them going forward as they prepare for the start of training camp in less than a month.
