some suspended players are playing until the appeal is heard, why can’t / isn’t Sean Payton doing the same thing?
The players’ right to appeal is written into the collective bargaining agreement, as is the appeals process - the CBA specifies what the league can and can’t suspend them for, and the appeals are designed to ensure that the league stays within those guidelines. Because coaches aren’t part of the union, they don’t have the same rights and protections that players do. Since the players’ CBA restricts the league more than the law does (otherwise it would be useless), the players have agreed-upon protections that coaches don’t.
That’s where my actual knowledge ends. My guess is that Payton has no grounds for appeal unless he can show that the league has broken the law.
To simplify that answer.
Sean Payton is Management. Essentially he’s on the same team as Goddell and they handle disagreements in-house.
The Players are Labor. Labor, in a unionized workforce, gets all kinds of special considerations. Made even more complex by the existence of the NFLs anti-trust exemption.