The NFL is a fickle entity.

One day you’re way up, and the next day you’re way down.

Just ask the Denver Broncos – the world champion Denver Broncos, that is – who began the week with two quarterbacks and now have none, or the Browns, who, on the first day of free agency on Wednesday, lost three of their better players in center Akex Mack, safety Tashuan Gipson and wide receiver/returner Travis Benjamin, and a guy whom everybody mistakenly thinks is a good player in right tackle Mitchell Shwartz.

Never in the history of free agency since it began in earnest in 1993 have the Browns lost so much on any day of free agency, let alone the first day.

Talk about taking the wind out of your sails, this certainly did just that for the Browns, whose new regime had had pretty high marks, and was riding a wave a momentum, in its first couple of months of operation.

As we talked about recently, perception is 90 percent of reality, and while previously the perception had been that the Browns were doing some good things and on the upswing, the perception now is that they’re careening backwards.

Again.

Part of the reason those players signed elsewhere is the fault of the previous regime, whose constant losing turned players off. They wanted to go places where they felt they had a chance to win.

But part of the fault for their departure also lies at the feet of the members of this new regime, who had plenty of money to spend in free agency yet didn’t ante up enough to be able to sign four of their own players.

Benjamin was fast and not durable and, as anyone who has ever watched Schwartz can plainly see, he is certainly no Cody Risien. So those two players aren’t as big f losses. No player in Browns history did so little yet was given credit for doing so much as Schwartz, who, save for a few games, found pass blocking to be a skill he couldn’t master.

But Mack, especially, and Gipson are real losses, make no mistake about that. The Browns, who already didn’t have enough good players, couldn’t afford to suffer loses like that. But they did, and that’s a public relations problem for them.

The Browns went into the offseason, and into free agency, with a plan, and with contingencies if their plan didn’t work. Is their plan going the way they thought it would, or are they already on to those contingencies?

That’s not clear, but no matter which one it is, the fact of the matter is that they’re far worse off now than they were just 24 hours ago. They have to replace the players they lost. But with whom? And will these new players be as good, or even any good?

Again, that’s hard to say. The good thing is that they don’t have a game today, or tomorrow, either. But before they play one that counts in six months, the Browns have a lot of work to do.

Maybe today, the second day of free agency, will be different, better, and they will begin filling some of the holes that were created on Wednesday.

At least from that perception standpoint, today – no matter what happens — can’t be worse than yesterday.