Fans at the New England Patriots' win over the visiting Houston Texans could be heard booing players who knelt during the anthem

NFL fans could be heard booing as hundreds of players protested during the national anthem over Week 3, but the spectators' presence was conspicuously absent from television coverage.

A 'behind-the-scenes TV staffer' at one NFL stadium told Sporting News that camera operators were told not to shoot the jeering crowd.

A CBS spokeswoman said that no such directive was given and an NFL spokesman told DailyMail.com that the league did not have any conversations with its network partners about how to cover the anthem.

Anthems are not typically broadcast during the regular season. But, after President Donald Trump condemned the protests in speeches and on Twitter for the better part of the weekend, networks opted to broadcast 'The Star-Spangled Banner' throughout Week 3.

NFL players began protesting police violence against minorities during in 2016, when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the anthem before a preseason game. Although Kaepernick remains a free agent, the protests continued over the first two weeks of the 2017 season before engulfing the entire league in Week 3 in response to Trump's criticism.

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Many Patriots players took a knee prior to Sunday's game against the visiting Texans

WATCH: Patriots fans boo their team during anthem protest in wake of Trump's comments. More from @arniestapleton: https://t.co/5dfjstwRJs pic.twitter.com/kvLmSzG28w — AP NFL (@AP_NFL) September 24, 2017

Trump claimed the boos directed at the Dallas Cowboys were the 'loudest I have ever heard.' ESPN earned a 9.3 overnight rating, which is a 63 percent jump from Week 3 last year

In many cases, boos could be heard during NFL broadcasts even if the fans were not seen

Boos could certainly be heard on some broadcast in Week 3, but clear shots of disgruntled fans were seemingly non-existent.

For instance, CBS's Week 3 matchup between the Jets and Dolphins did show police officers saluting the flag as raucous boos were being directed to the kneeling players on the field.

An NFL spokesman called any suggestion that the league asked networks to avoid showing booing fans 'fake news.'

Ratings for Week 3 seemed to peak at the start of the broadcasts, when the anthem is played, but the overall trend for NFL ratings is a bit muddled.

ESPN's Monday Night Football netted a 9.3 overnight rating, which is to say that 9.3 percent of households in Nielsen's 56 markets tuned in to the game. That's a 63% increase from Week 3 of the previous season.

However, the Dallas Cowboys (often referred to as 'America's Team') typically draw a large audience. So even though the players, coaches, and owner Jerry Jones knelt and locked arms during the anthem, the ratings boost isn't a sign that fans approved of the team's decision.

In a tweet, Trump said the booing before the Cowboys' game was the 'loudest' he had ever heard.

The Dallas Cowboys and owner Jerry Jones took a knee while locking arms on Monday night

Sunday Night Football, on the other hand, saw a slight dip in ratings. NBC netted an 11.6 rating which was the network's lowest of the season, according to Deadline.com.

That broadcast featured both teams sitting, kneeling, and linking arms during the anthem, but fans were relegated to the background.

Despite the decline in viewership, NBC still drew 13.5 million viewers between its pre-game show and the Redskins-Raiders game, making it the highest-rated network of the evening, according to The Futon Critic.

Regardless, Trump still took aim at the NFL's ratings on Monday.

‘NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN,’ Trump tweeted Sunday, prior to NBC's broadcast of Sunday Night Football. ‘Boring games yes, but many stay away because they love our country. League should back U.S.’

Many of Washington's players knelt before Sunday's win over Oakland. NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast was its lowest-rated of the season

Green Bay Packers players stood with their arms locked before Sunday's win over Cincinnati

‘Great solidarity for our National Anthem and for our Country,’ Trump followed. ‘Standing with locked arms is good, kneeling is not acceptable. Bad ratings!’

Trump even went so far as to try to persuade NFL fans to ‘refuse to go to games until players stop disrespecting our Flag & Country.’

The tweets doubled down on comments he made during a speech in Alabama Friday night.

During the speech he said any player who protests racism by kneeling during the national anthem is a 'son of a b****'.

As a way of bringing fans and players together, the Green Bay Packers have asked fans at the game to link arms for the national anthem ahead of their Thursday-night matchup with Chicago.

If we truly believe in American values, then we need to appreciate the differences in this country Retired Dallas Cowboys running back and NFL Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith

While the public response to the protests have been mixed, retired Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt said Thursday that the the players and the league are handling it the right way.

'This is freedom of speech and often times freedom of speech goes a lot of different ways,' the Hall of Famer told Morning Show the morning dose. 'You have people that are for things; you have people that are against things. The right that we have in this United States is to protest and be able to protest in a peaceful way.

'I think they’ve done a great job of managing the situation,' Smith continued, referring to the players and the league. 'They weren’t called to the forefront. Somebody thrust them to the forefront and forced them to have a response.

'The beautiful thing is you have black, you have white, you have all kinds of races, all kinds of religions joining forces for one cause and that’s to say we are united as one organization – just like the United States needs to be united,' Smith concluded. 'If we truly believe in American values, then we need to appreciate the differences in this country.'