CLEVELAND — The drive into the stadium on game days can be peaceful and sometimes a little too quiet for NFL players left alone in the car with just their thoughts. So Joel Bitonio acknowledged that, as he pulled into Huntington Bank Field for perhaps the final time Sunday, his mind began to wander about the past, present and future.

The Cleveland Browns are certainly in a season of transition, and that extends to their veterans, too. Bitonio and Wyatt Teller have been franchise pillars at left and right guard for seven seasons now, which is a lifetime in the NFL. Bitonio was drafted here 12 years ago and Teller joined him via trade in 2019. They have been elected to 10 Pro Bowls between them, anchoring in their salad days what was one of the best offensive lines in the game.

Now there is a strong chance neither will be here next year, which made Sunday’s 13-6 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Browns’ home finale just a little bit sweeter — at least for the two of them. For those who were watching the draft board, Sunday was fairly miserable.

The Browns are so bad at winning that they can’t even lose properly. The win dropped them from second to sixth in the draft order with another winnable game still to go next week at Cincinnati.

People such as Bitonio, who might not have a next year, and Kevin Stefanski, who might not have a next year in Cleveland, can’t really worry about draft position. But the owners and executives who watched Sunday’s win from the suites upstairs certainly cared. There’s a wide chasm between drafting second (and being in position to take a quarterback) and drafting sixth with the lingering debate of whether to trade up or stay put and focus on other positions.

For all of the Browns’ problems the last couple of years, they have inexplicably beaten the Steelers four consecutive times in Cleveland and six of the last seven. The Browns historically have fared so poorly against Pittsburgh that Ben Roethlisberger remains third on the all-time wins list among quarterbacks in this dingy, dumpy, depressing stadium despite never taking a snap for the home team.

So no, guys such as Bitonio and Teller don’t care very much about quarterback debates or draft positions.

“I don’t blame the fans for thinking about the future and everything like that,” Bitonio said. “But as players in this locker room, every time you go on the field, it’s a resume. … And for this team, there’s a lot of young guys. … These guys are trying to build a culture for the future.”

The Browns have been building … something … for 25 years. Like abstract art, nobody seems to know what it is, though. Bitonio gave a staunch defense of Stefanski last week at the team facility and encouraged the franchise to stick with him despite the team’s record the past two years.

Bitonio’s point was essentially that when the Browns have gotten sound quarterback play, Stefanski has won at a moderately consistent level. That hasn’t been the case over the last two years.