FOXBORO — New England Patriots players got their first chance to meet with new NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, as his tour of the league’s teams brought him to Gillette Stadium on Wednesday.

A darkhorse candidate, Smith was elected to his post in March by the 32 NFL player representatives, beating out two former players and a sports attorney in the process. The NFLPA needed a new executive director after longtime head Gene Upshaw passed away last August.

Smith, 45, spent more than two hours speaking to about two dozen Patriot players. That meeting was preceded by a one-hour meeting with New England owner Robert Kraft in his office at the stadium.

Smith, who has ties to President Obama, classified both meetings he had in Foxboro as good ones.

“It was the first time that Mr. Kraft and I have had a chance to talk. I think it was a very friendly discussion. I think it was a little bit of a get-to-know-each-other (chat). Hopefully he has a good understanding of who I am. I think I have a much better understanding of who he is. We both love the game and we know that hopefully we can call on each other down the road,” Smith said. “With the players … it was great to talk about where the players are today, with respect to a business world where the owners have opted out of the [collective bargaining] agreement (CBA). We talked about the effects of an uncapped year.

“But we also talked about the challenges that face us, and frankly, they know that we are the underdogs in this climate. The owners made a choice to opt out of an agreement that generated an excess of $8 billion in revenue last year. They know we have to get to the negotiating table and talk about those issues.”

Hammering out a new CBA is the top issue facing the NFLPA and the league itself; currently, the 2010 season would be played without a salary cap (and, conversely, no salary floor). Smith has said that if there is one uncapped year, the players will never go back to playing with a cap.

Team owners opted out of the CBA about a year ago, unhappy with the terms of the deal the two sides came to in 2006 that calls for over 60 percent of revenues to be spent on player salaries.

The prospect of an uncapped year weighs heavily on players.

“We spent a lot of time talking about where they are, and they know that right now they are in a business paradigm where the owners have opted out. There’s an uncapped year on the horizon, and we talked a lot about the effects of an uncapped year, the substantial decrease in disability payments to our disabled and retired players,” Smith said. “They have questions about what happens to their health care for their families in an uncapped year. It is clear and present on their minds.”

Smith was asked if he had a chance to speak with Patriots linebacker Adalius Thomas, who last month made some strong remarks in regard to the proposed 18-game regular season and the way the NFL handles business with its players.

Thomas called for team owners to have to undergo independent audits that would show how much money each club is making. He also intimated that were the league to add two regular-season games, he would make sure he was on the injured list for those two additional contests were player contracts not recalibrated to reflect the longer season.

But Smith’s talk with the players was more general, not specific.

“We didn’t get to chat about those things directly,” he said. “Look, we spent a lot of time talking about the extended season. The players understand the cost. They understand the cost — they know what their body is like at the end of a season. They understand there’s a 100-percent injury rate in the NFL. What they don’t understand is how do you figure out, or begin to talk about, a compensation model for that because they don’t know what the average rate of return is per team, per game. They don’t know what the annualized profit rate is.”

smanza@projo.com