Roger Goodell, owners, select players discuss kneeling during anthem

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, several NFL owners and a few players met in New York on Tuesday night to discuss kneeling during the national anthem and related issues, multiple media outlets reported Thursday.

New York Giants defensive captain Jonathan Casillas, who was among the 20 to 30 people present, said no concrete decisions were made. Rather it was an exchange of ideas on what the league plans to do moving forward and how to approach player protests.

"You got to see opinions from the owners and from the players as well," Casillas told ESPN.com. "Stuff like that is very good, very proactive. Thank (President Donald) Trump for saying what he said because without him saying that, (1) the whole league wouldn't have been so collectively together, (2) we would've never had a meeting."

Among the owners who attended Tuesday night's meeting were John Mara of the Giants, New England's Robert Kraft, Pittsburgh's Art Rooney II, Jacksonville's Shad Khan, Miami's Stephen Ross, Philadelphia's Jeffrey Lurie and Cleveland's Jimmy and Dee Haslam.

Players included Casillas; Devin McCourty and Matthew Slater of New England; and Cleveland's Jason McCourty and Christian Kirksey, among others.

Casillas thought the two-hour session productive.

"I know the owners for sure don't want us kneeling," Casillas said. "It's what the message is getting across. People have been totally misconstruing the kneeling thing, from the beginning, from when Kaepernick did it in the beginning. Everyone is talking about the players disrespecting the flag. It's never been written and it's never been said anything about kneeling down is disrespecting the flag.

"We discussed moving forward about the whole kneeling situation and basically John Mara told us -- and I was sitting next to him side-by-side at Tuesday's meeting, so I knew where he was coming from -- and he basically said he can't ask us to do anything, really. He just requests that we stand. If he had any request, that would be a request of his. But if anyone here, if anyone in the locker room, feels like they want to kneel or feel that they have to kneel, he would be supportive of anybody that decides to do that."