Less than a year ago, there was wide-ranging insistence that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was on his last legs. He was, many pundits and fans insisted, incompetent, clueless and at odds with various powerful owners like the Patriots’ Bob Kraft. Well, we should all hope one day to be in such a predicament.

At the end of that troubled 2014 season, the one punctuated by the missteps and dishonorable moments that went with Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Adrian Peterson, domestic-violence policies and Deflategate, a clearly subdued Goodell said, during his State of the NFL address at the Super Bowl: “It’s been a tough year on me personally. It’s been a year of humility and learning. We obviously as an organization have gone through adversity. It’s an opportunity to get better. It’s an opportunity for our organization to get better. So we’ve all done a lot of soul searching, starting with yours truly.”

Many NFL observers kept insisting this or that was the last straw. Goodell had lost powerful members of his constituency, they said. One minute they said it was Kraft. Next it was small-market owners like Jim Irsay in Indianapolis. Then it was the big cheeses like Jerry Jones. Empty boxes were being sent to his office to help him pack.

Then the truth came out this week. It was true! They cut his pay!

Sure they did.

In 2014, which will be the last time you ever publicly hear what Roger Goodell is being paid because the NFL office finally got called on their phony claim of being a “non-profit” operation for tax purposes, those angry owners on the Compensation Committee (Kraft, Atlanta’s Arthur Blank and the Panthers’ Jerry Richardson, Hardy’s former employer) awarded Goodell total compensation of $34.1 million, including $26.5 million in bonuses, $3.7 million in pension benefits and $273,000 in “other” compensation, which one hopes included paying for his personal copy of the CBA and someone to explain it to him.

That was down a million bucks from the year before and $8.2 million down from 2012, but well above his nine-year average compensation despite many embarrassing moments and repeatedly losing wrestling matches with labor law during the past year. Where do I sign up for that kind of rebuke?

The NFL’s 32 owners have paid Goodell a yearly average of $20 million and a total compensation of $180.5 million. One can only hope your bosses get so angry with you they just slap the compensation ceiling on you at $20 million per year. Take that, mister!

Last year the NFL reportedly grossed $11 billion. That’s a lot of zeros and because there’s so many none of those owners, including Kraft, can stay mad at good old Roger for long.

Deflategate vs. $11 billion in revenue? What do you think Kraft would choose?

Lost No. 1 pick vs. $11 billion? Please take two picks.

Goodell may have blown every encounter he had with the disciplinary side of the CBA, but the fact is it’s a one-sided document that leans heavily in favor of his 32 bosses. Win for Roger.

Under his leadership, the owners dodged all responsibility for the concussion plague that keeps rearing its ugly head whenever another former player dies and allows an autopsy to be performed on his brain. Goodell and his minions worked out a settlement on an issue some felt could end up costing the owners not only billions but also their game’s place in the public consciousness for a cost per owner of between $25 million and $30 million. Chump change.

More remarkably, they also never had to admit liability or culpability when anyone who has been paying attention knows all those aging players committing suicide or getting ALS at rates far more frequent than the general population are in those sad circumstances because of how they were treated — or not treated — by the powers that be in the NFL.

Goodell also has sold the general public a pound of baloney about how much things have changed and how hard the league is working to come up with solutions to what may be an unsolvable problem. Look, he says, we paid General Electric $10 million just to work on concussion research in 2014. What he doesn’t tell you is that’s $3.1 million less than the league spent on rent for its offices on Park Avenue. Priorities? Room with a view over view of broken brains.

Despite the mounting evidence that football is one of the most dangerous endeavors in sports, Goodell said at this year’s annual State of the NFL that he played football through high school and would want his sons to do the same. Just for good measure he added, “There is risk in life. There is risk sitting on the couch.”

There is risk sitting on the couch, but it’s generally not brain damage. Where there is no risk is sitting in the Park Avenue seat occupied by Roger Goodell. His paystub in 2014 made that clear.

You can launch all the Twitter attacks you want in his direction. You can write angry letters to Bob Kraft or vent on talk radio until you’re blue in the face. It won’t matter. Not as long as Roger Goodell and his administration make it rain green for those owners, because in the end you may be deflated by the way he operates, but Kraft and his peers are not.

TV ratings are up and he’s convinced the football-watching world gambling on fantasy football is not really gambling even though you’re betting on the unpredictable performances of individual players and losing each week to professional gamblers who know how to work algorithms. He just got NBC to fork over $450 million to broadcast half of the worst night of football games of the week, renewed a DirecTV deal paying $1.5 billion a year and replaced Motorola as a league sponsor with Bose. Is Motorola still in business?

CBS and NFL Network had “Thursday Night Football” to themselves. Now they get to share the pain with NBC while the league doubled its money. When’s the last time you saw a good game on Thursday night?

No matter. The owners have a team-friendly CBA for five more years, Goodell is about to hammer out a money-making deal on streaming video (Can you say, “The NFL on Netflix!”?) and the cash is rolling in.

Deflategate? What’s that got to do with anything?