About a month ago, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers appeared on The Pat McAfee Show and publicly called out ESPN for what he viewed as the outlet’s lack of coverage of former Athletic NFL insider Dianna Russini and New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel’s alleged scandal. Rodgers argued that despite ESPN being Russini’s former employer, nobody at the outlet seemed willing to address the controversy.

And now, Rodgers is back at it. Only this time, during an appearance on the Not Just Football With Cam Heyward podcast, the 42-year-old quarterback criticized ESPN for giving prominent coverage to other off-field NFL stories while seemingly overlooking a situation involving a potential conflict of interest between a reporter and a head coach.

“I also said you are a gutless organization because they haven’t said anything,” said Rodgers on the Not Just Football With Cam Heyward podcast. “They spend so much time on certain issues, but you won’t talk one second on the Dianna Russini situation.”

Rodgers’ claim that ESPN has been completely silent surely requires some qualification. When Page Six first released Russini and Vrabel’s pictures from an Arizona resort, the outlet covered the controversy.

The reporting included the initial fallout, Russini’s resignation from her post, the investigation into her work, and Vrabel’s response. The network has also continued reporting on the issue as the 2026 season is now underway.

At the same time, however, it’s worth noting that Rodgers’ argument is less about whether ESPN mentioned the controversy and more about the prominence and intensity of that coverage compared with other NFL controversies.

That is what gives Aaron Rodgers’ broader media criticism its footing. The Russini-Vrabel controversy ultimately produced a formal newsroom standards violation involving one of the NFL’s most prominent reporters and a sitting head coach.

The quarterback’s criticism is gaining traction at a time when Russini and Vrabel’s controversy has once again come under the microscope. At the beginning of the month, The Athletic’s nearly five-month internal investigation, released on September 3, concluded that Russini’s relationship with the Patriots head coach was a “clear violation” of the outlet’s newsroom standards because it should have been disclosed.

The review examined 903 stories and 77 videos connected to Russini’s work and found no clear evidence that she used her platform to promote Vrabel or his teams. In fact, only around 5% of the material reviewed involved Vrabel, the Tennessee Titans, or the Patriots.

The findings didn’t establish that Russini’s reporting was deliberately biased or that she and Vrabel were together, yes. But the investigation indeed established a conflict-of-interest violation.

Subsequently, Russini resigned from The Athletic in April and maintained that she stood behind her journalism. Vrabel, meanwhile, is back to his head coaching job, as the Patriots just suffered a 13-10 season-opening loss to the defending Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks.

Whether ESPN’s respective treatment of the two stories was disproportionate is a matter of editorial judgment. Aaron Rodgers, however, is clearly questioning why some NFL controversies receive far more prominent attention than others.