Are the players the Browns added both on free agency and trades since last Friday, good additions?

That remains to be seen. There’s no way of telling.

It would be like going to a restaurant and trying to judge the quality of your meal before you’ve had chance to take a bite. Similarly, these new Browns need to get onto the field in games that count in the standings before e can begin to evaluate their worth.

But here’s what we do know, and on which can offer an opinion: The Browns needed to bring in a lot of new faces to change the culture and fortify the roster, and did so. They used some of their wealth of salary cap room to do it, along with a series of trades. They did not have to give up any of those highly-valued picks in the 2018 NFL Draft. They still have five of the top 64 selections, including Nos. 1 and 4 overall.

And as much as these veteran players the Browns have acquired will, theoretically, help them to begin to move out of the muck they’ve been stuck in throughout the expansion era, it is those five prime draft choices, especially the two first-rounders, who will loom large in building a firm foundation that, the team hopes, will allow it to win – and contend – over an extended period of time.

That’s what makes what the Browns have done so far, really exciting. The best – again, in theory – is yet to come.

Give new General Manager John Dorsey all the credit for this. It’s something his predecessor, former Browns Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown, would never, ever in a million years have been able to do. He lacked the football acumen to pull it off.

As such, it’s so far, so good for Dorsey.

But he will ultimately be judged on what he does in this draft. The fact, though, that he has made the most of his opportunities to this point, provides a reasonable expectation that he can sustain it in six weeks.