The Browns special teams have gotten a special dispensation from the football gods the last several years.

That is, with the club’s offense and defense both being so bad, the struggles of the special teams have flown the radar. But make no mistake about it, they’ve been terrible overall.

Until dynamic returner Joshua Cribbs finally reached the end of the line and Joe Banner — always the smartest guy in the room in his warped estimation — decided that the team was so good that it didn’t have to re-sign the best kicker in franchise history, Phil Dawson, the Browns had good special teams for the first 14 seasons of the expansion era. It helped, at least a little bit, to offset the ineptness of the offense and defense.

But since then, all three phases of Cleveland’s game have been miserably bad.

The fact that, for some strange reason known only to the Browns, they continue to employ Chris Tabor as their special teams coordinator, served only to make their situation even more intolerable.

But perhaps that is starting to change — at least in some measurable regards.

A couple weeks ago, the Browns re-signed long snapper Charley Hughlett to a six-year contract extension.

Then just the other day, the club re-signed punter Britton Colquitt to a four-year deal. In his first season with the Browns in 2016, he set a single-season franchise record with a net average of 40.3 yards. In addition, he landed 22 punts inside the 20-yard line.

Re-signing a punter and a long snapper may not sound like much to get excited about. And that’s understandable. It’s special teams, and few care about those guys.

But Colquitt and Hughlett are good at what they do, and the Browns are so starving for talent that they can ill afford to pull a Banner and let productive players get away, no matter what their roles.

The Browns got a little better these last several weeks in locking up Colquitt and Hughlett for the long haul. Though perhaps minor in comparison, these are among the growing number of positive moves the team has made this offseason, along, of course, with re-signing linebacker Jamie Collins and hiring Gregg Williams as defensive coordinator.

Now the Browns have to continue that forward roll by scoring in the draft and free agency. And if they do, then that would be extra-special.