In the last game he played in the Alliance of American Football, cornerback Charles James II of the Memphis Express smack-talked a receiver on the Orlando Apollos. Rather than push back, his opponent had an interesting response.

Man, we doing all this and we don’t even know if we going to be here next week.

“This was during the TV timeout,” James recalled to USA TODAY Sports, “but we bust out laughing because there was already speculation that this could all be over soon.”

That was just one glimpse into what could end up as the last week of the football league that suspended operations on Tuesday after majority investor Tom Dundon pulled his finances with two weeks of the regular season left to play. USA TODAY Sports spoke to several players who relayed stories of confusion about what was happening, waiting around for rumors to be confirmed, hearing the news during practices and figuring out what’s next.

The Express fell to the Apollos 34-31 to drop to 2-6 on Saturday evening. The team returned to Memphis that night. On Sunday, players and coaches held meetings — “just regular stuff,” per James — and Monday was an off day.

On Tuesday, they went back to work. The Express ran their typical special teams meetings and players later prepped for practice. James went out to the field early to get extra work in before the session. He sat on the field to warm up when he felt an offensive coach tap him on the shoulder. The coach told him they had to go back inside to have another meeting.

“I’m not stupid,” James said. “We never went back to have another meeting in the eight weeks I was here and the small portion of training camp. There was already speculation that the higher-ups in the league were having a meeting around 12 o’clock or 1 o’clock whether the league was going to be done. So I look at the time and I know that meeting already happened.

“So I ask the coach, ‘Hey, is this (expletive) over?’ ”

The coach didn’t want to say, but James knew. Inside the facility, coach Mike Singletary later told the players the league was suspended and, with things on hold, for them to treat it as an off day.

“Right then and there, I knew it was over for good,” James said. “You don’t just suspend it. Can you imagine the NFL getting suspended like that? Hell no. That doesn’t happen.”

James said an awkward silence hung in the room. Players looked around at each other, puzzled. They later returned to their temporary residences. They milled around when their phones started to ding with email and text messages indicating they were required to check out of their rooms by that same night.

“It was like, ‘Damn, really? Like, tonight?’ ” James said. “I mean, that was a first. What kind of (expletive) is that? So then I was like, well, ‘I’m sure you’re going to figure out transportation and have flights scheduled, or you’re going to compensate guys for gas and stuff like that.’ Well we got another message saying that’s not happening at all.”

Then, a final round of messages read that there would be no future meetings and that their contracts would be terminated. That was it.

“A lot of these guys are younger guys who had never been through this process,” James said. “I’ve never been in the process of a league ending, but I’ve been cut before. Seven times. I’m used to picking up and being in another place. But this is too fast, too soon. We’re talking about relationships, memories, all that — gone.”

James stressed that he doesn’t place any blame on Singletary or general manager Will Lewis. He suspected that decisions to have players check out of their hotels and not have travel reimbursements came from above.

James spoke of the team’s fullback, Anthony Manzo-Lewis, who lives in New Jersey and, with no place to go, had to drive 17 hours to get home.

“All his stuff packed in his car and he had to leave,” James said. “That’s (expletive). Stuff like that, it’s just not right. It’s unprofessional. It really pissed me off, to say the least, ’cause it’s a sad event. You’ve got people shuffling around trying to figure out if they can stay another night or if they need to get a hotel. And not only that, the league is over. It’s really over.”

***

The stories from players elsewhere in the eight-team league are similar.

Last week, Arizona Hotshots management told players the team had been in communication with AAF CEO and co-founder Charlie Ebersol. Dundon had sparked uncertainty about the future when he told USA TODAY Sports last Wednesday that the league could be discontinued if the NFL Players' Association did not offer assistance by agreeing to allow the league to use young players from NFL rosters. The Hotshots relayed that everything was to resume as normal ahead of Sunday's game against the San Antonio Commanders.

“We were — not necessarily led to believe that everything was going to be OK, because we still thought something was going on — but we thought they were going to be able to get everything worked out,” former Hotshots linebacker Steven Johnson told USA TODAY Sports.

Then the game ended. Players were starting to celebrate when Ebersol walked into Arizona’s locker room.

“He congratulated us, but we all had some questions,” Johnson said. “So we were like, ‘What’s going on?’ And he told us they were doing everything possible. ‘Everything is going to be all right. Just go to work.’ Then he kind of made a joke about it, so we were all thinking it was cool.”

APOLLOS ARE CHAMPS! At least according to sports betting site FanDuel

AAF:The latest in a long line of failed start-up pro football leagues

DAILY SPORTS, DELIVERED:Get the best Sports news in your inbox!

The Hotshots had a lift on Monday and players went in to receive treatment.

“Everything was normal,” former Hotshots linebacker Nyles Morgan told USA TODAY Sports. “Just business as usual.”

Tuesday was a day off. Johnson was having breakfast when his phone dinged. Someone tagged him in an Instagram post. It broke the news to him that operations were being suspended.

“I went and looked at it, and I was like: ‘Is this an April Fools' joke?’” Johnson said. “I didn’t know. I started looking up stuff and calling my teammates, and they were like, ‘Yeah, man. It’s over.’ ”

Said Morgan: “The first I actually heard about it was on ‘SportsCenter,’ and I was just: ‘Oh, lord, this can’t be real.’ ”

Like the Express, the Commanders found out during practice. But rather than lead everyone back into the facility, the coaching staff told the players right on the field.

“Kind of blindsided everybody in the organization,” Commanders running back Kenneth Farrow told USA TODAY Sports. “As more and more details come out, just about kind of how it went down and things like that, it's been pretty sad, pretty unfortunate. And from more than just a player's standpoint, as well.

“The coaches, the people up in the front offices, marketing — all those people, they just got cut off and people are looking for jobs now. So it's very unfortunate how it happened and how it went down, and like I said, it was pretty much blindsided. Everybody was. So it's been a pretty rough 24 hours."

Players lamented the AAF’s decline for the purpose that it temporarily filled as a development league. It allowed a variety of players — fringe roster types, veterans looking to bounce back from injury, young players who need more seasoning — to produce game film that could entice NFL teams to take a chance on them.

“The league was actually really fun,” former Hotshots cornerback Dexter McDougle told USA TODAY Sports. “We had coaches that coached in the NFL 20-plus years, and some came out of retirement to take a chance on this. One coach told us that he had lost love for the game in the NFL and this reminded him why he loved football so much. I mean, aside from when I was with the Eagles and we won the Super Bowl, this is some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing football.”

Some players said they might entertain the inauguration of the XFL, which is set to kick off in 2020. Others said they will continue to work out with the aim of latching onto a roster during the NFL’s organized team activities, due to start after the draft this month.

But for now, players — both with experience and without — need to figure out what’s next.

“I just got fired yesterday, so I’m trying to weigh all my options,” Morgan said. “I gotta make some more phone calls, see where I’m going to go train. I need some time to figure out my next step, but it’s all about keeping my football dreams alive. ’Cause just like yesterday, it could all be gone just like that.”

Contributing: Tom Schad

Follow Lorenzo Reyes on Twitter @LorenzoGReyes.