The NFL absolutely wants a franchise in LA but the comment on expansion was just to be politically correct. Goodell has to make comments that would be somewhat encouraging to those in LA who will be making a multi-billion dollar investment (if they do build the necessary new stadium) or the LA pipedream goes down the drain. If his encouraging statements lead people to believe an LA franchise will be a relocation of an existing team, Jacksonville and St Louis will have trouble getting 15k people in the stands.
Any further expansion will ultimately require four new teams in each conference, something that will take a decade and a half at the minimum to pull off correctly. Until this is completed, there will be a major imbalance in divisions (one with five teams and three with four in each conference) causing scheduling and competitive balance issues. It took the NFL twenty five years to move from their first post merger expansion (Seattle & Tampa bay) to what was the ultimate post-merger goal (to have four divisions of four teams like the NFL had during the final two seasons before the merger). They are not going to throw away the current configuration and end up with two seventeen team conferences.
