Dianna Russini and J.J. McCarthy have both had quite the 2026 offseason. J.J. McCarthy for football reasons, and Russini…also kind of for football reasons.
Dianna Russini resigned from her position at The Athletic after the fallout from the leaked photos of herself and Patriots HC Mike Vrabel at a resort in Arizona were released to the public. The internet did its job, spreading the story like wildfire, resulting in Russini leaving her reported $800,000 yearly salary behind.
J.J. McCarthy has seemingly gotten his job stolen by Kyler Murray, who signed with the Vikings in March as a free agent. The Vikings swear up and down that it’s a competition, but it’s hard to think Murray won’t just be the starting QB after all is said and done.
The two storylines crashed together on Monday, after bodycam footage of Russini’s traffic stop was released.
Dianna Russini Uses Texts With Kevin O’Connell to Get Out of Ticket
GettyNFL insider Dianna Russini attends BODY at ESPYS at Avalon on July 11, 2017, in Hollywood, California.
Isabel Keane of The Independent recently reported that Russini got out of a traffic ticket by Facetiming the officer’s favorite football team’s head coach. Keane shared that that tidbit was shared by Russini herself on a podcast earlier this year before the Vrabel scandal.
Now, the bodycam footage from January 19th, 2026 has come out. Dianna Russini didn’t Facetime anyone, as it turns out. Instead, she pulled up her text messages with an NFL head coach. This came after she asked the officer’s favorite team, to which he responded “I’m a Vikings fan…unfortunately”. A good takeaway from this is that he really is a Vikings fan, because he said “unfortunately”.
Russini then pulled up her text messages with Kevin O’Connell, trying to use her connections within the NFL to get out of the ticket. The officer was impressed to see that she had the phone number of his favorite head coach.
Dianna Russini did include one interesting note about the Vikings while talking to the officer after saying how much she loved KOC.
“Your quarterback sucks, though!”
The quarterback she was talking about was, of course, J.J. McCarthy. The officer seemingly agreed, and said that the Vikings “gotta fix it”.
Even the most publicly-made-fun-of person in the NFL this year is poking fun themselves at J.J. McCarthy. As Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk mentioned, the officer ended up cutting Russini a break, and let her go with a warning.
Vikings Might Not Have a Shot at Signing Joey Bosa
GettyFOXBOROUGH, MASSACHUSETTS – DECEMBER 14: Joey Bosa #97 of the Buffalo Bills warms up prior to a game against the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium on December 14, 2025 in Foxborough, Massachusetts. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
Per the trusty Adam Schefter, Joey Bosa is apparently strongly considering retirement.
“It is more likely than not that Joey Bosa has played his last NFL down.
Now, again, could a situation like the 49ers come along that entices him enough to come out and play again? Yeah, absolutely. We saw it happen last year with Philip Rivers, so you never know when a player is fully done and when he’s not done. But the fact of the matter is, I think if the Niners wanted to pair those two together, it probably would have happened already.
I think if Joey Bosa wanted to play football, it probably would have happened already.”
It is possible that Bosa might just be considering signing much later in the offseason after training camp. However, if Schefter is throwing out this much smoke, there just might be a fire. Thankfully, the Vikings still have options like Jadeveon Clowney and Kyle Van Noy, just to name a few.
Dianna Russini Brings Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell and QB J.J. McCarthy into Controversy