Commissioner Roger Goodell declared at the Super Bowl that the NFL made “enormous progress” on social issues after last year’s incessant barrage of disturbing developments, led by the Ray Rice domestic violence and Adrian Peterson child abuse crises.

That bombardment hasn’t much abated in 2015, with at least eight players arrested, a star suspended, an agent indicted and a Hall of Famer fired.

Also enmeshed in the headlines are Johnny Manziel checking himself into a treatment program and the murder trial of Aaron Hernandez getting under way.

All of this against the backdrop of the league’s investigation into whether the Super Bowl champion Patriots surreptitiously provided under-inflated footballs for their AFC championship win.

“It’s a discouraging start to the new year,” said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. “But my hope is it’s an anomaly for 2015.”

That will hinge on whether discipline and dishonor — “the players aren’t going to want to be mentioned in the same story as Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson” — serve as deterrents to further transgressions, he said.

The players’ union maintains it’s not a one-way street, noting that several instances of owner misconduct went unpunished last year, raising questions about the congruity of Goodell’s discipline. The union cited the cases of the Vikings’ Ziggy Wilf, the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones and the Browns’ Jimmy Haslam.

Former NFL coach Tony Dungy suggested the players’ alleged misdeeds are reflective of society at large, commonplace when young players go from strict schedules to offseason freedom.

“It’s always a dangerous time and it kind of happens every year,” Dungy said. “If you just read the local paper every day you’re going to read about DUIs, speeding tickets, incidents at nightclubs. But it wouldn’t be anybody’s name you would recognize.”

Not so when it’s an NFL player.