FOXBOROUGH – At noon on Tuesday, Mike Vrabel did what he had to do to begin moving forward.

With more and more attention on the images and subsequent story regarding him and Dianna Russini, Vrabel addressed the situation with a statement lasting a little over two minutes inside the new New Balance Athletics Center next to Gillette Stadium.

“Let me first begin by saying thank you. Thank you for your patience you’ve shown in a personal and private matter for me and obviously, everybody involved,” he began. “I know that’s not easy for you and I appreciate that and respect your efforts in doing so. I understand I could have addressed you guys sooner, but it was important to me to have a conversation with the players, which I did yesterday very candidly as we began our offseason program, which everyone is excited to be a part of.

“Stacey (James) had mentioned players’ availability (scheduled for Tuesday). It was never my intention to have them speak to you or address you before I did. So, I asked him to come today to talk with you. I also don’t want to take away from the draft, the weekend of the draft. This is an important time for us as an organization and the excitement and the joy that those players are going to have that we bring onto our football team. They’re starting an amazing journey, one that should be celebrated as we welcome them onto our team.

“With that being said, I’ve had some difficult conversations with people that I care about. My family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. We believe that in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me, that starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. You never want to be the cause of a distraction. There’s comments and questions that I’ve answered for the team and with the team, we’ll keep those private and to ourselves.

“I care deeply about this football team and I’m excited to coach them. I also know that I’m going to attack each day with humility and focus. What I can promise you is my family, this organization, the team, the staff, the coaches, everybody, our fans most importantly, will get the best version of me going forward. That’s what I know and I’m excited to do that. But, I wanted to just address this and thank you for your patience dealing with a private and personal matter.”

Regardless of how you feel about the situation, from a football standpoint, this was a necessary thing for Vrabel to do.

Now, he’ll probably have to address it again when the full team is in Foxborough for mandatory minicamp, just so everyone is on the same page. But, as Vrabel pointed out, this weekend should always be about the guys having their lives changed forever when they’re drafted.

If the first time Vrabel had met with the media was Thursday night at 11:30 after the team made a selection, it simply wouldn’t be fair to that kid or his family. Not only that, but for the guys that are in town right now for the voluntary portion of OTAs, they can go about their business as usual and pass by Vrabel in the hall each day knowing everyone is clear with each other. No eggshells in that beautiful new building.

This (unfortunately) won’t be going away anytime soon – mostly because any time the Patriots are involved the country needs to stop and stare like it’s a car crash – but Tuesday was the first step forward in (hopefully) getting back to the whole chasing another Super Bowl run thing.