Who should the Browns pick for a coach?

I can answer simply:
The only available coach with 200 career wins; 13 playoff appearances in 21 seasons as a head coach; a head coach of the year award; nine current head coaches who have worked for him at one time or another; and five previous seasons (four of them full seasons) as Cleveland Browns head coach.
Marty Schottenheimer.
The hot coach for this off season is former Steelers' coach Bill Cowher. Bill Cowher is a Schottenheimer disciple. Why go after the disciple if you can get the original?
As a fan, I am sick and tired of the team hiring coaches and general managers with little or no experience doing the jobs they'd be doing with the Browns. This describes Chris Palmer, Butch Davis, Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage. Oh, wait — silly me. I have just named almost every head coach and general manager since the team came back in 1999.
Can it be that the Cleveland Browns have not hired anyone experienced in the new job they would be doing? No general managers who have been winning general managers before? No head coaches who have been winning head coaches before?
OK, there were two. Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark came from the same positions with the San Francisco 49ers. Policy was the president and Clark was the vice president and director of football operations. That's all. Clark was gone after two years, and Policy after five.
That's right: Other than Policy and Clark, none of the people the Browns have hired since their return in 1999 have any kind of proven record of success, just a good interview and the confidence they could do the job. And, more importantly for this argument, none of the head coaches had ever been head coaches before.
Scott Pioli, who has been discussed as a possible GM, is merely another Phil Savage, who has been second banana in a winning organization. All the coaches and personnel guys from the Patriots (including Eric Mangini and Josh McDaniels who have been mentioned as possible coaches) have benefited from having Bill Belichick as their head coach. If you want to re-invent the Pats, then bring in Belichick. He has the track record. If not, leave his lackeys alone.
Other coaches being mentioned, including Kirk Ferentz, Jason Garrett, Steve Spagnuolo, Jim Schwartz and Rex Ryan, have exactly zero games — and zero wins — among them as an NFL head coach.
Why not get a coach who has won everywhere he has gone?
Why not pick a coach who has turned around three franchises and led them to the playoffs multiple times?
Why not pick the last coach who actually was able to win in Cleveland?

From Wikipedia:
Schottenheimer became Cleveland's head coach midway through the 1984 season, replacing fired head coach Sam Rutigliano. Schottenheimer would remain with the Browns until 1988, amassing 44-27 (.620) regular-season record and a 2-4 (.333) mark in the playoffs, including four playoff appearances, three AFC Central Division titles, and two trips to the AFC Championship Game.

Remember those days, when we could almost count on seeing the Browns play in January in the wind and snow at the old stadium? (For my money, Schottenheimer shouldn't have been fired by the Browns in the first place, but that's an argument for another day.)
If he were the head coach, it's almost a guarantee the team would get better in the first year. It's almost a guarantee the team would make the playoffs in the first two years.
The team would have discipline, organization and a sense of identity. The players would have a unity of purpose and play aggressively. The defense and the running game would improve immediately. That's what his teams always do.
Just like everywhere else he has gone, we know from Schottenheimer's record that he would get the Browns into the playoffs, which is a heck of a lot more than we can say about any of the other candidates.
Who cares if Schottenheimer is 5-13 in the playoffs? The Browns have not been there but twice since he left in 1988, anyway.
Here's the blueprint I'd follow: The Browns should bring in an experienced general manager who has built winning teams in the NFL (Floyd Reese and Carl Peterson are glaringly available) and let them do their jobs.
Then, they should also pick a coach who has led winning teams in the NFL and let him do his job.
For my money, that man is one of the people in sports I admire most: Schottenheimer. He knows all about how to win, and, specifically, how to win in Cleveland.
If that blueprint doesn't work, then I'd say team owner Randy Lerner should cut his losses and move the team to Schenectady — there ain't nothing gonna fix these Browns.
But, remember when the Indians were trying to rebuild in the late 1980s? What did they do? They hired longtime general manager Hank Peters, who built a winning organization in Baltimore, and veteran manager John McNamara, who took the Boston Red Sox to the World Series just four years earlier.
When they got the ship headed in the right direction, they handed things over to their planned successors, John Hart and Mike Hargrove, and the Indians won lots of games in 1990s.
It worked then, and it would work now.
I promise.
Hire Marty, Randy Lerner.
Please.
We need him back.