The NFL has indeed revised the Personal Conduct Policy. It has plenty of important additions. It has one monumental omission.
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.
And it likely wasn’t the result of a clerical error. In the Deshaun Watson case, his lawyers aggressively pointed to owners who engaged in actual or alleged misconduct, and who did not suffer “more significant discipline” under this supposedly “higher standard.” Watson’s defense intended to specifically raise the league’s handling of Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Jones chided the approach last year.
“It is a standard Players Association comeback,” Jones said at the time. ”That is the drill. That is the drill to go around to say you didn’t punish such and such. Anybody would know that every player case and every case that involves non-players in the NFL are dealing with dramatically different principle facts, which is all the difference in the world. . . .
“It would be like walking down to the courthouse and saying, ‘You didn’t give that guy that much,’ and not take into account what the action was or the circumstances behind it. That’s called shooting volleys. That’s just shooting stuff over your back. That’s the way I look at it when I see something like that.”
It will now be harder for the NFLPA to take this approach when defending players against potential punishment under the Personal Conduct Policy. Although there still could be an argument that owners or other non-players received better treatment, the ability of a player to point to an owner and point out that the “higher standard” language is a bunch of baloney (because it was) will now be removed from the legal arsenal.
There’s a potentially significant P.R. element to this. The NFL has rescinded, in plain sight, its position that "[o]wnership and club or league management have traditionally been held to a higher standard and will be subject to more significant discipline.” How will fans and media react, now that the change has been noticed?
The bigger question, of course, is when or if owners and club or league management will ever be held not to a higher standard but simply to the same standard as players?
UPDATE 11:05 a.m. ET: 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.