The letters went out this week, via priority mail, which organizers maintain they are sending to every single NFL player at every single team headquarters in the NFL.
Given the techno times, Twitter blasts were sent, too, to reach this audience.
In their exhaustive campaign to force Washington's NFL franchise to discard its racially-offensive team name, the Oneida Indian Nation and the National Congress of American Indians are trying to generate more momentum by enlisting players.
That's ambitious enough. Appeal to individual consciousness.
Yet something is missing.
The letter sent to the players, a week after 50 U.S. Senators denounced the team name, was signed by 75 entities, including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and the National Urban League.
Not on the list of signatories is the NFL Players Association, conspicuously absent with an official position.
Although DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA's executive director, has acknowledged that the team name is a slur and implies that it should be changed, the union has not been compelled to throw its weight on the issue.
This is a bit surprising, given that the NFLPA battles the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell on so many fronts.
"I have conveyed my thoughts on this issue both to Roger and to the team," Smith said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports. "They understand our position and I believe that those conversations are most effective when they can remain private.
"As I have stated publicly, though, I do not believe anyone should inflict pain, embarrass or insult, especially given the racial insensitivity of the term 'Redskin.' As you know, I grew up here and like all Washingtonians I became a fan of this team. The beauty of sports and of the Washington football franchise is that it will always have the ability to bring this community together, regardless of what decision is made about the team name."
Eric Winston, the NFLPA's newly-elected president, recently has expressed similar sentiments but also stopped short of calling for Washington owner Dan Snyder to change his team's name.
"That's not something we're going to get in the middle of," Winston told Pro Football Talk Live.
Maybe that's why proponents for changing the name are carrying their plea directly to the players, sensing that it could ignite the union leadership to take a stronger stance.
"The players union has been has been a strong voice against inequality and injustice, and it has a moral responsibility to continue that legacy in the face of a team promoting a dictionary-defined racial slur," Oneida Indian Nation representative Ray Halbritter said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports.
"We are grateful that Executive Director DeMaurice Smith has spoken out on this issue, and we are hopeful that the union's leaders and players will stand in solidarity with the groups fighting this injustice, just as so many of those groups have stood with the players in their disputes with the league."
Typically, the NFLPA, a member of the AFL-CIO, has been prone to lend its support for labor issues. It backed the unprecedented efforts this year by football players at Northwestern to form a union, just as it once backed hotel workers seeking to unionize in Indianapolis.
It also launched a recent campaign resisting proposed legislation in Louisiana that would have changed the formula for applying worker's compensation benefits to pro athletes. The bill, which could have directly affected some of its constituents, was withdrawn.
But the controversial Washington name issue, despite being so close to home, is a different animal.
Will enough NFL players step forward individually to provide a push?
Few players demonstrate the nerve of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, who is willing to freely express himself – and often in a thoughtful manner – on almost any subject.
By and large, you're talking about a group that despite being more 70 percent African-American, hasn't even shown an overwhelming conviction to denounce the use of the N-word.
So it might be a stretch to expect that a large percentage of players – not to be confused with social activists of the 1960s – will become passionate about Snyder's team name.
But the challenge to move the needle exists. And perhaps there's hope, given the manner in which NBA players rallied – in concert with leadership from its players union -- as the situation that exposed the racist views of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling unfolded.
On one level, the bar was raised for what's acceptable in the sporting environment.
Yet no outside groups needed to solicit any support from NBA players.
The letters to NFL players might raise awareness and educate, more drops in the bucket of a process that proponents of the name change have been engaged in for years.
The correspondence would probably be a lot more effective, though, with a priority buy-in from the body that represents leadership for the players at large.
(Quote:DeMaurice Smith - DeMaurice F. "De" Smith (born February 3, 1964) is the Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), and he was elected unanimously by a board of active player representatives on March 15, 2009. As Executive Director of the NFLPA during the 2011 NFL lockout, Smith played a major role in helping the players and NFL owners come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.)
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