My impression of Goodell, before I met him, was not favorable. I am a fan of the New England Patriots and like pretty much all Pats fans have an unshakeable belief that Goodell was farcically unfair to Tom Brady with his heavy-handed treatment of the quarterback’s possibly being ‘‘generally aware’’ that a minuscule amount of air pressure might have been removed from the footballs he used in last year’s A.F.C. championship game — the so-called Deflategate scandal.

Pats fans have company in their distaste for the commissioner. Goodell has come under blistering public criticism, periodic calls for his resignation and a procession of rebukes in court over a host of incidents and scandals — each knowable in shorthand (Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, the various ‘‘-gates’’). He is booed every year at the N.F.L. draft. There are sports bars with dartboards featuring his likeness. Goodell’s high profile is itself a testament to football’s runaway prosperity and popularity. ‘‘It’s like the old saying,’’ the Houston Texans’ owner, Robert C. McNair, told me. ‘‘The higher up the palm tree the monkey climbs, the more of his ass is exposed.’’ McNair laughed. He supports Goodell, although he thinks his astronomical salary makes him a target of easy resentment ($44 million in 2012 and $35 million in 2013 in salary and bonuses, the last years those numbers were available).

Every chief-executive job involves political duties, but watching Goodell, who is 56, evokes a most familiar mastery. I live in Washington and usually write about politics; Goodell — whose father, Charles Goodell, was a senator from New York — seems very much of that world. On camera, Goodell can come off as tight, smug and sanctimonious — a politician, and not a particularly compelling one. Since the Ray Rice domestic-violence scandal of 2014, he rarely speaks to the news media in unsafe settings. He repeats himself often and recites talking points. ‘‘We’d like to see him more relaxed and smiling and answering the questions,’’ McNair said. ‘‘You know, he’s got all these legal advisers telling him you can’t say this or you can’t say that.’’

But as he worked the stadium from midfield before the N.F.C. championship game, Goodell’s schmoozing genes were elite. He moved among his constituents in a former jock’s ballet of bro-hugs and two-handed handgrips, punctuated with backslaps. He received guests, laughing easily if not for real. Goodell made sure to seek out Panthers executives, the Cardinals’ owner, referees and each head coach.

‘‘Come on, let’s walk,’’ Goodell told me. ‘‘If we don’t get away from the crowd, we’ll never get this done.’’ Goodell said he spends many N.F.L. Sundays watching games at home in Bronxville, north of New York City. He boasted about his man cave equipped with three TVs, which he watches simultaneously while checking multiple laptops. He watches as a fan, as the commissioner and as a micromanager, firing off emails, making calls to his staff about everything from a referee’s call to something an announcer said to a promotion he caught that should not have aired. Goodell told me he spends most weekends watching game after game of football — pro, college and even high school. I asked him if he had seen ‘‘Concussion,’’ the Will Smith film about the devastating toll of head injuries in N.F.L. players and the league’s complicity in either ignoring or covering up the problem. Goodell said he would get around to it. ‘‘I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to a movie,’’ he told me, although in the next breath he said he had seen ‘‘The Intern,’’ starring Robert DeNiro, with his twin teenage daughters during the snowstorm the night before. Goodell then shoveled out his driveway so he and his wife could go to Soul Cycle on Sunday morning before he flew down to Charlotte via N.F.L. corporate jet. He likes people to know that he’s a workout fiend. He gets up at 5:30, does his weights and cardio and gets ‘‘jazzed up’’ to start his day. He has no visible belly but always seems to be flexing his torso under tight blue suits. Goodell also likes it known that he used to play football in high school, and he appears to be especially energetic around N.F.L. players in their workplace.

More and more, the commissioner’s job is to serve as a protective buffer for the Membership. He talks about head injuries so that the owner of, say, the Buffalo Bills does not have to. No one called for the resignation of the Ravens’ owner, Steve Bisciotti, after the video of Ray Rice knocking out his girlfriend in an Atlantic City elevator went public. Goodell testified before Congress on concussions in 2009 and listened to Representative Linda T. Sánchez of California compare the N.F.L. to the tobacco industry for its indifference to the physical harm being done to its players. ‘‘He is smooth, very smooth,” Jerry Jones said of Goodell. ‘‘I’d say he’s very classy. You see that kind of discipline and refinement.’’