On Monday, the Cleveland Browns completed their sixth interview for their vacant head-coaching job. They could have six more completed by the end of this week. What was always going to be a wide-ranging, deliberate search remains in the slow lane.

Eventually, there will be either known finalists or at least a group of candidates who visit the team’s suburban Cleveland headquarters. Most early interviews (and all of them with coaches whose current teams are still in the playoffs) are conducted digitally. When there’s a list of Browns’ follow-ups and coaches who instead chose to pursue other jobs, we’ll know more about who Cleveland might really be chasing.

In the meantime, let’s go over what the Browns are selling. With eight NFL head-coach openings as of Monday evening, a Cleveland franchise that has no clear answer at quarterback and needs to rebuild its offensive line and wide receiver group doesn’t exactly jump to the front of most appealing jobs.

The New York Giants and Tennessee Titans have 2025 first-round quarterbacks who played extensively as rookies. The Baltimore Ravens have two-time MVP Lamar Jackson. The Atlanta Falcons have a vacancy after going 8-9, and have star running back Bijan Robinson as the headliner of an offensive group that includes wide receiver Drake London and 2024 first-round quarterback Michael Penix Jr.

The Browns fired Kevin Stefanski after winning just eight games over his final two seasons. But they retained general manager Andrew Berry, who’s leading the coaching search, and Berry is banking on four 2025 draft picks becoming cornerstone players in the years to come as Cleveland tries to recover from the disastrous 2022 Deshaun Watson trade.

The defense has real stars, while the offense has multiple holes but some promising young players in tight end Harold Fannin Jr. and running back Quinshon Judkins, both of whom were added on the second day of the 2025 draft.

What’s Berry’s pitch? How can the Browns match the strengths of their preferred candidate to the personnel department’s blueprint for improving the roster and maximizing the talent already on hand? Is this really a better job than it might appear to be when compared to others? If so, here’s a guess at how Berry is selling it.

The defense

With 23 in 2025, Myles Garrett broke the NFL’s single-season sacks record. Garrett, who just turned 30, is a weather-changing force who speeds up quarterbacks and play callers. He signed a mega-extension last March after demanding a trade, and the future Hall of Fame disruptor is now locked in as a franchise cornerstone.

Even though the 2026 Browns are going to be young and new in multiple spots, there’s a ready-made defensive line headlined by Garrett and likely Defensive Rookie of the Year Carson Schwesinger at linebacker. Cornerback Denzel Ward was just selected to his fifth Pro Bowl, and 27-year-old safety Grant Delpit is coming off his best season.

Last year’s draft started with a trade for Jacksonville’s 2026 first-round pick and the selections of defensive tackle Mason Graham and Schwesinger. An in-season trade with Jacksonville brought 25-year-old cornerback Tyson Campbell, who played well over the back half of the season.

The Browns are hoping disruptive defensive tackle Maliek Collins can recover from his season-ending quad injury and again be productive in what will be the final year of his current contract. While linebacker Devin Bush is eligible for free agency after his best year, pass rusher Alex Wright signed an extension during the season.

The Browns can win ugly with Garrett and the group around him. It’s a headache-inducing unit positioned to be good again.

Jim Schwartz as a potential piece

Schwartz, the defensive coordinator for the last three seasons, interviewed for the head-coaching job and, per multiple reports, will also interview with the Ravens.

Schwartz, as a holdover at defensive coordinator and experienced engineer of that attack-style defense, makes sense as a selling point. If his staying is a mandate for the new coach, as has been publicly rumored, that situation could be messy. But if Schwartz were fine with keeping his current job and working under a new head coach, the overall expectation level for the 2026 Browns would be higher than it would be with a change in coordinators.

When Cleveland fired Stefanski, it did so knowing there were no guarantees with the current staff. But based on results to this point, Schwartz has been the best hire the Berry-led Browns have made in multiple years. Maybe there’s a scenario in which Schwartz becomes the head coach. Maybe the Browns make an external hire but the person wants Schwartz to stay — and works on making that happen as things are finalized.

We’re guessing on the dynamics, but any thought that the Browns want to keep Schwartz in some prominent role is sensible.

For the Browns, the defense is the obvious No. 1 selling point to any candidate. That defense with Schwartz in the same role has the best chance to maintain and improve upon its current high standard.

The head coach can be a big part of picking his QB … in 2027

The quarterback situation is not great. Whether it qualifies as interesting, alarming or something else is up to the candidates.

Whether you’re new to the quarterback situation or already have your chosen adjective in mind, let’s lay it out: The Browns are likely stuck with Watson for one more season. He hasn’t played since October 2024 and is returning from a twice-torn Achilles tendon. Shedeur Sanders started the final seven games of 2025 and showed at least some promise. He in no way established himself as a sure answer, but he’s under a rookie contract and improved in multiple areas over the season’s final two months.

Sanders threw too many interceptions — and near-interceptions — but he also didn’t have enough help. If you view Sanders as a developmental quarterback who just happened to be more famous and scrutinized than anyone with whom he shared the quarterback room in 2025, you can fairly view him as a player who should benefit from his end-of-season experience.

Though it’s hard to imagine the Browns continuing to employ Sanders and Dillon Gabriel after inexplicably drafting both last April, Gabriel is also signed through 2028. Unless a major external move at quarterback is coming in March (which would be a surprise), the Browns likely will be in no hurry to finalize the shape of the room and a potential open competition for spring and summer.

As for the aforementioned “big” move or addition over the next three months that might be a true selling point for a new coach, options currently appear few. But any prudent long-term vision would likely include the Browns acknowledging a multi-year project in boosting the offensive roster and a 2026 emphasis on finding young players who can help the quarterback.

The Browns are more likely to restructure and keep Watson for one more year at an estimated 2026 salary-cap number of around $40 million rather than carry a number basically double that to cut him. At pick No. 6 in the first round, the Browns likely will be left out of the top of what appears to be a thin quarterback class.

Early signs point to Sanders getting to compete for the job, Watson being stuck on the roster and another quarterback addition in the middle rounds of the draft.

There is a world in which the Browns either trade for Mac Jones, who has one year left on his deal, or package picks to move up in this draft. But, at least here in the first half of January, we’re viewing those options as less likely than a plan that includes giving Sanders a shot, giving another developmental rookie (or cast-off) a chance to eventually play and gearing up for a full-throttle chase in early 2027.

If Watson actually has to play next season, that’s the result of choices Cleveland has made in the past and a reminder of why Berry seems to be facing a tough-sell job right now.

The extra Jacksonville pick

With the Jaguars’ season now over, the Browns know they have their own pick at No. 6 in the first round of April’s draft and Jacksonville’s first-round pick at No. 24. In total, the Browns have 10 picks in this year’s draft and three fifth-round selections.

Obviously, that Jacksonville pick isn’t what Berry hoped it would be when he made the trade last April. And the early impression of the quarterback class is that the best ones will be gone immediately. But the extra Jaguars pick always seemed to be made with the intent of Berry and the Browns using it to acquire a quarterback as early as 2026, so several possibilities remain open.

And the Browns having three of the draft’s top 40 selections, with the ability to move from any of them, can be spun as a plus for improving the roster and solidifying key spots. Four of the Browns’ five starting offensive linemen from Week 1 in 2025 are eligible for free agency in March.

The Browns will spend

The new coach will receive a long-term contract at near the top of the market. Money hasn’t been the issue (unless you think the Watson deal or building scouting and analytics staffs that are among the biggest in the league count as too much) under the ownership of Jimmy and Dee Haslam, which dates to 2012.

The Browns have salary-cap issues to sort out with their 2026 roster, but they were a top-10 cash spender in 2025, per Spotrac’s roster cash charting, and a top-five spender in each of the previous four seasons. The 2024 team started as the most expensive team in NFL history before things went sideways and some expensive players were traded away.

But there’s also past spending as proof that once the Browns dump the Watson contract and develop a clear plan for handling the offensive line, they’ll be back to aggressively spending the way they did under Berry before last offseason. The Browns face dead-money issues with some of their likely departing offensive linemen and other contract accelerations that were made with 2024-25 in mind. But outside of Watson, much of that dead money can be taken on in 2026.

Assuming the Browns keep Watson for 2026, they’ll eventually be able to spread the remaining $90 or so million in cap commitments they have to him over the 2027-28 salary caps.

Stability as part of the vision

Given the organizational history and that Stefanski was fired less than 18 months after signing an extension, this might be the kind of point you have to squint to really see. But all signs point to the Browns looking to secure someone for the long haul and the post-Watson era.

Before Berry and Stefanski came along, no lead football executive got more than two years under Haslam ownership, and the only head coach to get more than two years, Hue Jackson, got half of a third season in part because he took over a team going through an aggressive teardown in 2016.

But Berry remains on the job, and Stefanski got six seasons. The only real explanation for Berry remaining employed is that his 2025 draft class is off to a strong start, coming at a time when the Browns pretty much acknowledged that a strong class would be necessary during an awkward transition period. The best way to get through it faster, obviously, is to add more good players and get to winning more games.

Without knowing the exact tone of the discussions (and eventual negotiations), the Browns figure to tell candidates they’d like to keep much of the defense together while continuing to trend younger with key additions in March and April.

If the Browns can continue to build a new core via the draft and play defense at a level similar to 2025, any offensive improvement should be noticeable — and lead to better results as soon as next season, as part of a vision for 2027 and beyond.