The NFL’s personal conduct policy used to include a phrase that made it clear that team owners were held to a higher standard than the players and as a result could face more punishment as a result of violations of the policy. But it appears that this phrase no longer exists.
According to a report from league insider Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the NFL has silently removed the phrase from the latest version of the league’s Personal Conduct Policy.
“A side-by-side comparison of the latest version of the policy (dated 2021) and the 2023 version, a copy of which PFT has obtained, reveals that one very important sentence has been removed: ‘Ownership and club or league management have traditionally been held to a higher standard and will be subject to more significant discipline when violations of the Personal Conduct Policy occur.’
It’s gone. It has vanished. Deleted. Finito,” Florio wrote for Pro Football Talk.
Florio provided an update a few hours later, pointing out that this was only true for the policy given to the players, not the policy given to other league employees, which he theorizes is to prevent players from using previous this phrase as a defense against their own Personal Conduct Policy violations in the future.
“The statement in question, while removed from the policy applicable to players, appears in the separate policy applicable to league and non-player employees. It’s unclear why the sentence was removed from the policy that applies to players, other than to remove a defense for players based on the notion that owners and other non-players are held to a higher standard,” Florio wrote.
All in all, it’s a pretty shady move from the league.
