It seems like a and c are the same answer. however the answer is “players”, because they are not possessing anything. this is the correct answer, because the sentence is just looking for the plural form of “player”
Because that's the way it works and there is probably another strong reason
C. The auther uses humor to decide the issue for themselves.
On "The Weary Blues" In The Big Sea Hughes reported that his "Weary Blues," which won him his first poetry prize, "included the first blues [he's] ever heard way back in Lawrence, Kansas, when [he] was a kid." In "The Weary Blues" Hughes dealt with the blues singer and his song in relation to the speaker of the poem.