Last Tuesday afternoon, approximately 25 NFL owners entered the league's headquarters for routine committee meetings that grew into a conversation about player protests and Donald Trump.

Roger Goodell reached out to union chief DeMaurice Smith to suggest the protests should end.

"My only response was, 'I don't have the power to tell our players what to do.' ... At the end of the day, this is a group of players who are exercising their freedom. There is no room for me to snap my fingers and tell our players, 'It's time for you to give up a freedom.' Just the idea offends me. It's almost as if the players are being asked, 'What's it going to take for you to stop asking to be free or to be treated like an American?'"

Some owners saw the situation as a marketing opportunity. 

One idea had all players wearing a patch on their jerseys that would read, "Team America." An owner briefed on the proposal simply shook his head: "We need to do better than that."