With a 3-11 record and in having two hard-to-beat opponents left in the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers to finish the season, the Browns are headed toward getting the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft.

And if they don’t get that choice, then they might have No. 2.

Whatever ends up happening, the Browns are guaranteed of having one of the top picks.

The Browns’ two selections to the Pro Bowl as announced yesterday, left tackle Joe Thomas and center Alex Mack, provide a history lesson as the club continues its preparations for the draft.

The Browns got all kinds of offers for their No. 3 overall draft pick in 2007, earned the hard way after losing their last four games, and six of their final seven, to end with an abysmal 4-12 record.

But then General Manager Phil Savage held firm and kept the pick. He doesn’t get the credit he deserves for that, or for the player he ended up taking, Thomas, from Wisconsin.

Of all the horrific mistakes the new Browns have made at the top of the draft, Thomas is the one shining star in being as good of a pick as the club could have made.

Thomas is headed to the Pro Bowl for the ninth time in as many seasons in the NFL. As such, he has tied running back Jim Brown and kicker/left tackle Lou Groza for the most Pro Bowls in Browns history. You might have heard of those two guys. They are in Canton, and that’s where Thomas is headed once he waits the mandatory five years after he retires, which, the Browns hope, won’t be for a long time.

Indeed, Thomas could retire right now and get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has been that good. His star is shining that brightly, not just in Cleveland but throughout the league.

In addition, he has never missed a snap, let alone a game, in his career. As such, he’s a great player AND an ironman. It doesn’t get any better than that.

But what if Savage had traded out of the pick? That’s a scary thought. When you do that, you end up with someone like … well, cornerback Justin Gilbert.

In the 2009 draft, first-year Browns head coach Eric Mangini, holding the fifth pick, kept trading backward until he got down to No. 21, where he took Mack out of Cal. Mack has been a great player, too, having made the Pro Bowl for the third time in seven years.

But what if Mangini had stayed up at the top of the draft? Might he have gotten an even better player? We’ll never know.

And need we remind you that Mangini squandered all the extra picks he got in all those trades. So then, what did he really gain by that move?

Adding to that is the fact that Browns General Manager Ray Farmer, whose “genius” might even exceed that of Mangini, as evidenced by his bypassing all kinds of great players at No. 4 in 2014 to get Gilbert four choices later, almost traded Thomas to the Denver Broncos for all sorts of goodies in the draft. Those are goodies he would have ruined. History tells us so.

So whomever is making the draft decisions next year for the Browns – and we hope and pray it’s not Farmer, whose career success rate would have to be quadrupled to get within shouting distance of the Mendoza line – it would be wonderful if he put on his big-boy pants and kept the first pick. By doing so, then maybe – just maybe — he might end up with someone like Thomas.

The Browns need a lot of very good players. That’s certainly true. But what – or who, as it were – they need even more are great players, difference-makers.