N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell has asked team owners to consider a system that uses outside experts to decide suspensions for players who violate the league’s personal conduct policy.

Goodell made the suggestion in a two-page letter he sent to teams Monday that included talking points for the owners to discuss at a league meeting in New York on Wednesday. It will be the first face-to-face gathering of owners and top team officials since the release on Sept. 8 of a video showing the former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocking out the woman who is now his wife.

The ensuing firestorm included calls for Goodell to step down. Two weeks later, Goodell promised to overhaul the personal conduct policy governing off-field incidents because it was opaque and inconsistently applied. He said he hoped to unveil the new policy by February.

The biggest question is what role if, any, Goodell will have in policing players in the future. Since becoming commissioner in 2006, Goodell has made a point of trying to clean up the N.F.L.’s image and has used the personal conduct policy to penalize players for infractions he felt damaged the league’s reputation.

The controversy about how the league handled the Rice case has prompted fundamental questions about fairness and transparency. In his letter, Goodell said the policy, which was last revised in April 2007, “has brought credit to the league and to N.F.L. players.” But, he added, “our process for handling allegations of misconduct was not as well-established as it needed to be.”

As a consequence, Goodell asked the owners to consider what role the N.F.L. or teams should have in investigating player conduct and if they should continue to rely on law enforcement for guidance. Goodell also questioned whether a player should be suspended before his legal case has been resolved, and if a system should be created to put players on leave with pay, something that has been done with Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings, who faces child abuse charges, and Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers, who is appealing a domestic violence case.

Goodell added, “Should these decisions be made by a third party, or a panel of outsiders, or should they be made by the commissioner?”

Goodell also asked the owners to consider “the commissioner’s role in the disciplinary process” and “what level of accountability should be expected of clubs.”

Legal experts said the questions were good ones because they showed the league was rethinking its scattershot approach to disciplining players. The N.F.L., they said, needs to move away from an open-ended policy that penalizes players who have been cut simply because teams or the league are embarrassed by their behavior.

“One of the things they are doing is tying themselves to the social media world now,” said Paul Haagen, the co-director of Duke’s Center for Sports Law and Policy. Suspending a player based on accusations, not convictions, is chaotic because “in a world where there are many sources of information, it is just inviting the controversy of the day.”

Haagen said that while the league and not teams should still set the standards for personal conduct, the commissioner should be distanced from directly penalizing players.

“The commissioner needs to be able to review cases and not have every part of the process leading to questions about the integrity of the league,” he said. Creating this kind of system “requires sober thought and it sounds like they are starting to have that discussion.”