AP

It would totally stink to win the lottery.

In what is either an admirable display of loyalty or a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, Browns left tackle Joe Thomas said he would have been “crushed” if he had been traded to the Broncos last week.

“Certainly I would have been really crushed being traded and leaving all these guys that you work so hard with and all these coaches and the people that are in this building and these fans,” Thomas said, via Tom Reed of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It wasn’t until after the deadline that I realized that it was more serious than maybe just a rumor. At that point it was like, ‘Oh, interesting.'”

He was in a meeting at the Browns facility as the deadline passed last week, not realizing that he might have been close to heading to Denver, but for the two teams not agreeing on draft-pick compensation.

If they could have, Thomas would have gone from a 2-7 team alternating between Johnny Manziel and Josh McCown, to blocking for a future Hall of Famer and the undefeated Broncos.

But Thomas said he wants to see things through with the team that drafted him third overall in 2007, though he understands everyone has a price.

“I’m a realist,” he said. “I understand the business side of things. We’re all commodities. There’s a price on every one of us. If somebody offered 10 first-round picks for Tom Brady, they’d probably get rid of Tom Brady and he’s probably the best player that ever played.

“It doesn’t really bother me that they listened to people that offered things. It’s kind of like you’re walking down the street and somebody says, ‘Hey, nice watch. You want to sell it.’ You say, ‘Well, it’s not for sale’ but then you think and go, ‘Well, what will you give me?’ It’s just a matter of what the price is. Obviously it was, from the sounds of it, it was close but no cigar.”

So Thomas now still has his watch, allowing him to mark the time he’s spending in perpetual dysfunction.