“I remember an interview I did my rookie season,” Thomas told local reporters Thursday on a Zoom call. “I said I’d like to become a starter, make the Pro Bowl, then make the Hall of Fame. I didn’t think anything of it, but it was kind of this newsworthy item for this rookie to say he wanted to go to the Hall of Fame.”

The interview happened in 2007 after the Browns drafted him third overall, and everything Thomas has done since has put him on a path to smash each of those achievements.

Start games? Thomas started 167 of them at left tackle and played 10,363 consecutive snaps, believed to be the longest streak ever by an NFL player. Pro Bowls? Thomas is the only offensive lineman in league history to be voted to 10 Pro Bowls in a row.

Hall of Fame? Well, that’ll come soon enough. His first year on the ballot is 2023, and he should be as big of a lock as anyone in pro football history to make it on his first vote.

On Sunday, Thomas will be enshrined in another special club: the Browns Legends Program. 

He, as well as the late Darrel “Pete” Brewster, will be recognized at halftime of the Browns’ Week 2 home-opener at FirstEnergy Stadium as his 11-year career gets one more well-deserved spotlight in front of Cleveland.

“This is a really special step for me to be recognized by the organization and put my name among the greats of whoever wore a Cleveland Browns uniform,” he said. “When you look at all the Ring of Honors and Legends clubs throughout the NFL, the Browns are almost incomparable.”

Thomas already has one piece of recognition in the Browns Ring of Honor. The number “10,363” was added to the ring at the stadium in 2018 in honor of his streak and has been a symbol of what he aspired to be — a reliable, tough athlete who never quit on his team, no matter how difficult the times were. 

And for the Browns, those times were rarely easy in his career. They went 48-128 in games he started and cycled through six different head coaches and 20 different quarterbacks.

But 10,363? That number will be remembered forever by all Browns fans who watched him dominate.

“The thing that sticks out most when I reflect back on my career is those 10,363 consecutive snaps,” he said. “It’s special because it hadn’t been done before, as far as we know and as far as I’m willing to look. So I think it’s kind of a historic, difficult record. And as an offensive lineman, we don’t really get a lot of records, except for bad ones, holdings, penalties, so on and so forth.

“But I think more than that, it kind of typifies what I tried to be as a teammate, which was I tried to be reliable, I tried to be consistent, I tried to be always there for the guys around me to help them do their jobs as well as they possibly could, and that was what drove me to play through pain and play through injuries and show up every Sunday.”