Four things that could cover wide receivers better than Haden and Gilbert

The horse isn’t dead yet, but with a little help, we can get there soon. With the bye coming up on Sunday, we have almost two full weeks to bemoan the play of Justin Gilbert and Joe Haden through the first three games of the NFL’s regular season.

Just the worst. God-awful.  We never should’ve drafted Gilbert. You know what his name should really be? BUST-in Gilbert. Oh man that’s good—thought of it all by myself.  Also, any chance the ink is still wet on Haden’s contract?  It’s not too late to make up a story involved a shady lawyer and laughing gas or something and get the whole thing nixed, right? If we all put our heads together, there’s gotta be a way to fix the Browns secondary without cloning Buster Skrine.

Good thing is, I’ve been thinking about this. I locked myself in a room and watched clips of Haden getting beat and Gilbert committing penalties on repeat, with a few shots of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs spliced in to lighten the mood. And I think I know what the problem is.

These guys are just too human. Too damn human. They have eyes and toes and feelings. They’re weak inside. Under the pads and helmets and skin, they’re soft and gelatinous and vulnerable. They can even make mistakes!

Thus, we need to think outside the box here. The Cleveland Browns have failed every time they’ve tried to assemble the best on-field human talent. A-ha. Human talent. Thinking outside the species is the next wave in modern football’s evolution. The forward pass, the pulling guard, the no huddle, and now this: The homo sapiens’ NFL sun will soon be setting.

Behold, a selection of non-humans that could cover conceivably cover wideouts a million times better than Joe Haden and Justin Gilbert have through their first three games of the 2014 regular season.

Roomba

In many ways, the Roomba is the ideal NFL cornerback. It has two independent operating wheels with 360-degree turn ability, offering elite change of direction—it’d leave NFL Combine nerds in search of new, baggier pants. The largest models are only 3.5 inches tall, providing a low center of gravity and terrific balance. It uses iAdapt Responsive Cleaning Technology, which is probably capable of reacting to a hot read against the weak-side blitz.

Using the Roomba’s Open Interface, you can even program a series of commands to further enhance the machine’s abilities. Or, you can just hack the whole system and rebuild it in Champ Bailey’s image.  With technology these days, you don’t think we can teach that thing not to bite on play action in short yardage situations? Please. Get under the hood, go Toolman Taylor on it, give her a little more power, and the Roomba suddenly has game-changing top-end speed.

The Roomba does come with some limitations. The most significant one is its lack of a face. Without a face, it is difficult for the Roomba to intimidate opponents at the line of scrimmage or after the whistle. It is unable to punctuate a pass breakup with a sneer straight into the camera. Furthermore, endorsements will be tough to come by without a visage to put on the billboards. Bob Serpentini would have to look elsewhere.

Still, I am confident that the Roomba would be a capable spot starter, with room to develop into a potential Pro Bowl player. It would fare best in a man-free scheme, which would showcase its agility and acceleration in the open field.  Most DBs struggle to turn their hips and break on the deep ball down the sideline.  Roomba doesn’t even have a hip.

The Roomba is definitely better than both Haden and Gilbert, and dead even with 2001 Anthony Henry.

Paparazzi

If you just said out loud, “Hey wait, paparazzi are people,” then you probably already realize what a silly statement that was and also realize the extent to which you are wrong. They are to human beings what Richie Incognito is to team-building—the grainy dregs way down at the bottom. They took Princess Di but left us Paris Hilton—just the kind of maniacal bastard I need in my defensive backfield.

Just tell these people that you’ll pay them beaucoup bucks to follow Antonio Brown around for three hours, and Brown’s whole game is ruined. Paparazzi are guerrillas. They use the tactics that you know work, but don’t have the heart to pull off yourself. They are beholden to no code of conduct, which would ingratiate them with Commissioner Goodell.  They have no fear, no shame, no conscience, no memory. They would make the ‘85 Bears’ 46 front seem milquetoast and Deion Sanders seem conservative.

Antonio Brown’s whole worldview would be destroyed after one series. They would be shouting out the name of his junior high prom date and telling him his goldfish died. They would recite some crappy poetry he wrote in college after getting dumped. They’d do anything to take him out of the game, and possibly erode his entire mental wellbeing in the process.  He’d worry about evading his tormentors and not staying low out of his cuts. He’d make Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas look calm.

The paparazzi are unquestionably better than Nos. 21 and 23, and are right up there with Leigh Bodden at his peak.

Wallpaper

I mean, let’s not overthink this whole problem too much. Just run around the other team’s best receiver four or five times with a big roll of wallpaper before the game.  It’s tough for a guy to run the 12-yard dig when he can’t move his limbs independently.  Slap some of that glue on there to make it stick.  Your folks probably have some left over from when they redid the den in the 80s.  They may not have had taste, but they did have the tools to shut down AJ Green.

Boom, wallpaper. It can cover walls; it can cover receivers.  It’s way better than Haden and Gilbert, and at least as good as Daylon McCutcheon.

Scarecrow atop an RC car

This is the most innovative of the bunch, and also the most festive, what with the season changing at all. Scarecrows have a long, rich history of frightening birds in autumn.  Well, birds are like half the league: Falcons, Eagles, Ravens, Cardinals, Seahawks. Washington might change their name to a bird whenever they’re forced to. Jets look like birds. A player that has an immediate built-in advantage over six teams, including a division opponent, is unprecedented.

The rest of the league would still be an issue, but scarecrows have some skills. They have ideal size and can be enlarged to taste. You can stuff that thing with all the hay you want and make the arms ten feet long. You can even draw a scary face on it and give it silly hair. Scarecrows don’t have brains, and thus no feelings; they don’t care what you do to them. Every coach on earth wishes he had something like that to order around. But they can’t move on their own, and that’s why you need the RC car.

If you haven’t played with one lately, you are missing out on some badass RC car technology. They’re legit these days. They’re almost as good as the ones in the NES game RC Pro-Am.  They’re so fast and so furious that people remake whole Fast & Furious scenes with them. One could easily be manufactured to fit the specs of a prototype Cover 2 cornerback.

And Cover 2 is the best scheme for a scarecrow atop an RC car. Its size would allow it to get a good bump on the line, and its wingspan could reach multiple zones. It could attack downhill against stretch runs thanks to the RC car’s acceleration, and it would be a formidable presence in all phases of the game.

A scarecrow on top of an RC car is undeniably superior to Joe and Justin, at least thus far, and the rightful heir to Frank Minnifield and Hanford Dixon.

(Now seriously, guys, can you freaking cover somebody in a Titan jersey on October 5?)