The concussions didn’t even occur in the NFL? The denialism is hard to fathom—and it suggests so much about the mind-set of the owners and their commissioner as they steer the league into the future. The concussion settlement was a patch-up job, and now that the judge has deemed the payout cap to be unfair, the owners have no idea what their ultimate liability will be going forward. The class-action suit was the largest concussion case against the league, but not the only one. Relatives of Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012, are pressing ahead with a wrongful-death suit that has nothing to do with the broad settlement.

Could the season from hell have been avoided? Or at least a lot less bungled? Goodell’s predecessor thinks so. Tagliabue sees Goodell’s laser focus on profit and his combative stance toward players as key parts of the problem. "If they see you making decisions only in economic terms, they start to understand that and question what you’re all about," he said. "There’s a huge intangible value in peace. There’s a huge intangible value in having allies." As for his relationship with his protégé, Tagliabue says, "We haven’t talked much since I left. It’s been his decision. Bountygate didn’t help." In our conversation, Tagliabue seemed disappointed, and a bit sad, about the sorry state of the game he ran for seventeen years.

Others feel it, too, and wonder if the commissioner even recognizes the fullness of the league’s crisis. "The existential issues are, I would argue, issues that Roger just doesn’t find interesting," says DeMaurice Smith of the players’ union. With the NFL’s shrinking youth audience, narrowing fan base, and player-safety issues that just aren’t going away, Goodell’s goal of growing the league to $25 billion by 2027 is starting to feel like a naive dream. Whether the commissioner finds these challenges to be "interesting" or not, it’s entirely possible that the past few seasons will go down as the moment when the National Football League—the biggest, fastest, richest game in America—peaked and began to decline. The world changes, people’s values change, and institutions get left behind, no matter how big and powerful and unstoppable they once seemed. It happened to boxing in the 1980s. Big Tobacco in the 1990s. Is football next?

Late on the afternoon of December 10, the commissioner stood in front of journalists at the closing press conference of the owners’ meeting. He was there to defend the league’s new personal-conduct policy, which removed him from the investigation phase of player-discipline cases but preserved his final say over appeals. He looked careworn and a bit defeated as he answered question after question about "third-party arbitrators" and other employment-law jargon.

I raised my hand and asked Goodell a question: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned this season? "Anytime you go through this, it’s a chance to reflect and to learn an awful lot," he said. "I’ve obviously learned a great deal about domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse."

As he spoke, I thought back to a story that his friend Tim Foil, the former owner of the bar where Goodell worked during college, told me. One evening, a bull of a man barreled through the front door looking for his wife. "She’d come down to the bar to get away from him. She was a regular," Foil said. "He was probably six two, 240 pounds—a typical mean guy when he was drinking." Goodell was working behind the bar, watching the grim scene unfold. The man walked over and started hitting his wife. Goodell didn’t hesitate. "Roger got between ’em, broke ’em up, and told him to calm down," Foil remembered. As Goodell escorted the man outside, he said, "You’re in my establishment right now, and I’m in charge."

If only that Roger Goodell were in charge now.

GABRIEL SHERMAN (@gabrielsherman) is a contributing editor at New York.