The Mercy Rule  All Hail Quetzalcoatl  By David Roth   I goofed
on Al Davis, just like everyone else. We goofed on the late
Oakland Raiders owner because he looked like the Crypt Keeper in
a white sweat suit. And also because he spent his last decade on
Earth making hilariously bad football decisions and behaving
with all the befuddled malice of Junior Soprano in his
shuffling-around-in-his-bathrobe years. Davis legendarily read
every word written about the Raiders back when such a thing was
possible, which means that there’s perhaps a slight chance that
he read an article of mine in which I claimed (despite a lack of
convincing evidence) that he was in fact Quetzalcoatl, a
serpentine destroyer-deity who was popular in Central America
some centuries ago.  He probably didn’t, because by the time I
wrote that obscure piece, Davis had disappeared into what was
already an extravagantly fortified mental panic room, emerging
only to select players seemingly at random in the NFL draft and
pursue increasingly obscure