Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of Washington Secrets, your guide to what’s going on behind the red and blue curtains. First of all, apologies if you are finding delivery of Secrets to be sporadic. We are upgrading our systems, which will make the whole experience much more straightforward … once we get past some initial hiccups. Today, we hear from a former pro football player making the leap into politics and drill into Donald Trump’s Iran off-ramps.

Suppose you were a professional football players’ association rep who called out the NFL commissioner as untrustworthy and took the opposite side to the league and the owners during the 2011 lockout. A proper thorn in their sides.