The NFL closed its personal conduct policy review of free-agent wide receiver Stefon Diggs on Friday, June 12, 2026, declining to issue any discipline after concluding there was insufficient evidence of a policy violation. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported the league's determination at 1:50 p.m. ET, one month after a Massachusetts jury found Diggs not guilty in May 2026 of felony strangulation and misdemeanor assault and battery charges brought by a former private chef.
Diggs' attorney Mitch Schuster of Meister, Seelig & Schuster, who delivered the line that has anchored the legal narrative since the May verdict, framed the conduct-review result as a confirmation of his client's defense theory:
The evidence has shown what we've maintained from day one: Mr. Diggs was wrongly accused, and this case represents exactly the kind of opportunistic targeting that players can face the moment they step off the field.
With the league's review now closed, Diggs becomes a clean free agent for the first time since the New England Patriots released him in March 2026, eight months into the three-year, $69 million contract he signed in 2025.
The timing is the economic story. NFL teams begin mandatory minicamps this week and open training camps in late July, which gives Diggs a window of roughly six weeks to negotiate a contract before depth charts harden around incumbents. Receivers who land in late June and early July historically secure top-of-market deals for their tier; those who slip past training-camp report dates take prove-it contracts. The conduct ruling removes the last asterisk that would have flagged him for cap-conservative front offices.
Diggs is 32 and coming off the torn ACL that ended his 2025 Patriots season in October. His most recent full season was 2024 with Houston, where he posted 76 receptions for 952 yards across thirteen games before being traded. The film from those thirteen games — and from the three games he played for New England before the knee injury — is what general managers will weigh against the medical, which is now the only remaining variable in his market value.
The teams whose receiver depth charts most plausibly fit a 32-year-old veteran on a one- or two-year deal are the Kansas City Chiefs, Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills, and Green Bay Packers. Buffalo — where Diggs played four seasons and made four consecutive Pro Bowls between 2020 and 2023 — is the storyline option, though general manager Brandon Beane has historically avoided reunions with players whose departures involved publicly aired friction.
The case itself, for the record, traced to an October 2024 pay dispute with a private chef who later filed civil and criminal complaints. The trial spanned three weeks, with the jury returning the not-guilty verdict after twelve hours of deliberation. The NFL's separate Personal Conduct Policy review — which operates on a lower burden of proof than the criminal standard — could in theory still have produced discipline; the league's decision to close it cleanly is the read on what the league's investigation team independently concluded about the underlying facts.
What happens between now and Diggs' next signing is the more interesting league-wide signal. Conduct reviews that close without discipline tend to draw quiet pushback from advocacy groups; conduct reviews that close with discipline draw it from the players' association. The Friday-afternoon timing of the announcement, with the league's communications staff already mostly on weekend cadence, is the standard playbook for a ruling the league wants to land with minimal aftermath.
