Growing concern that we’ll all eventually lose our jobs to titanium-plated humanoids soared last week when president-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate restaurant executive Andy Puzder for labor secretary. Puzder, who would head the government agency that is supposed to protect American workers, is on record saying that he actually isn’t a big fan of American workers. In fact, he much prefers automaton laborers over real human beings: “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case.”

He’s not wrong about the politeness. Humans can be real jerks. Take Andy Puzder, for example.

Even if Puzder doesn’t get to set labor policy for the (for now) largest economy in the world, it won’t prevent the robot invasion. While Puzder and his ilk will be the ones who ultimately make all of us unnecessary and outdated, we’ve been willfully marching to our demise for years.

Football has been ahead of the robot trend for years. Puzder wants work done by unthinking, personality-free droids who do everything safe and by the book and limit risk? That’s basically NFL football coaches. Coaches perform on little rest, speak in basic phrases and cliches and are programmed to focus on just one thing. They were robots before robots were invented.

One thing NFL coaches are not, however, is interesting. Or entertaining or nuanced or innovative or anything that makes humans stand out. Unfortunately, the robot coach problem is only going to get worse.

Rex Ryan and Chip Kelly are likely not long for the NFL. It can be debated whether this is a bad thing for their respective teams or not. Rex’s Bills were all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs on Sunday after a lifeless slog in wintery slush against the Steelers, but Ryan does have enough coaching skill to have once taken a Mark Sanchez-quarterbacked team to a conference championship game. And, yes, Kelly’s 49ers are far worse than they were a year ago under Jim Tomsula – a man never once called a genius – but his Eagles team initially had some up-tempo success before he destroyed it all with indefensible personnel decisions.

What can’t be debated is the fact that Ryan and Kelly are far outside the standard NFL head coach mold. And the league likes its coaches to look and behave a certain way. It’s even an even more unforgiving standard than the one they use for quarterbacks, the one that sees guys like Christian Hackenberg taken two rounds before Dak Prescott. Ryan has never acted like a head coach. He laughs and speaks candidly at press conferences. He dresses up in costumes. He puts foot videos on YouTube. He makes bold predictions his limited teams have very little chance of rising to meet. Maybe he isn’t a great coach or even a good coach, but he’s entertaining – and the NFL too often is anything but.

Kelly promised innovation in a league where punting on fourth-and-one from the 50 yardline is standard operating procedure. He vowed an offense unlike the NFL had ever seen and he didn’t want anyone to tell him what to do or how to change to fit into the standard NFL box. That hubris has undoubtedly played a huge part in his downfall, but he at least was willing to try something very different in Roger Goodell’s corporation as sport.

The unfortunate thing with Ryan and Kelly is that their failings will be used by owners and GMs to reason that all coaches with personality or all coaches who are innovative can’t succeed in the NFL. They’ll decide that bringing on someone who is brash or has a different outlook on things isn’t worth the risk. Of course, it’s an absurd argument to make. Jeff Fisher has been a disaster as an NFL coach for most of modern history, yet no one has claimed men with mustaches shouldn’t get NFL head coaching jobs anymore. (Although that might be a theory worth investigating.) But watch, Ryan and Kelly will be used as reasons why the next round of hires have to be boring coachbots who betray no emotion and always kick the ball away on fourth-and-short.

The NFL instinct is to always revert to what is known and presumed to be safe. Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin went for two after each of his team’s four touchdowns four weeks ago against the Cowboys. The Steelers failed to convert each time and lost the game by five points. Since then Pittsburgh has only attempted a two-point conversion two times out of 10 opportunities. After one bad game, Tomlin – who already speaks like a robot in press conferences – was reprogrammed to behave like every other coachbot in the NFL.

The NFL needs personalities. It needs coaches who can keep the game fresh and exciting on and off the field. When Ryan and Kelly are gone, who is left? Don’t say Bruce Arians with his glasses and Kangol hats. That’s just putting a human-like costume on the same robot. It may just be Pete Carroll. But while Carroll may not act like a robot, he’s got issues with one of society’s other growing problems: conspiracy theories and fake news. Either way, we’re probably doomed.

The robots are not coming. They’re already here.

