Six days in September: NFL players seized control as league scrambled

As DeMaurice Smith drove Monday morning to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport for a flight to his annual locker room meeting with the Buffalo Bills, his phone rang. It was Roger Goodell. The two longtime adversaries -- the NFL Players Association executive director and the NFL commissioner -- had not yet spoken about the previous weekend, when league executives, team owners, coaches and most of the league's 1,664 players scrambled to figure out an appropriate response to President Donald Trump's harsh criticism of a few players' decision to kneel during the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Many players were outraged by Trump's comments during a Sept. 22 rally in Huntsville, Alabama, not only because he had mocked the NFL's attempts to make the game safer, but because he had said he would "love" to see an owner remove from the field and fire any "son of a bitch" who chose to kneel during the national anthem.

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