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The body count started midway through the first quarter Saturday night. A backup Green Bay Packers safety was the first casualty.

On the Ravens’ opening kickoff, running back Rasheen Ali got into Zayne Anderson’s pads. He drove him back 5, 10 yards, until he toppled over onto the Lambeau Field grass. Anderson was carted off the field with an ankle injury. He did not return.

Green Bay defensive tackle Jordon Riley was the next to fall. Ravens left guard Andrew Vorhees escorted him almost beyond county lines on a down block, clearing a path for running back Derrick Henry on a third-and-goal score early in the second quarter. Riley was carted off with an Achilles tendon injury. He did not return.

By the end of a 41-24 loss to the Ravens, four Packers players had suffered apparent season-ending injuries. Besides Riley, Anderson, and cornerbacks Nate Hobbs (knee) and Kamal Hadden (ankle), wide receiver Dontayvion Wicks left the game with a concussion.

The Ravens have not been the best at anything this season. A loss in their regular-season finale Sunday night to the Pittsburgh Steelers would extinguish their playoff hopes and cement this year as maybe the most disappointing in franchise history. But the Ravens have picked a good time to turn into maybe the NFL’s most physical team.

“This is as physical a football team as I’ve ever coached or been associated with at any level,” coach John Harbaugh said after the Ravens’ win Saturday, in which they outrushed the Packers 307-79 and more than doubled them in time of possession. “This is a physical football team in all three phases. Look at the kickoff coverage team. I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the way these guys bring it every single day. I’m proud of our brand of football. It means a lot to me to see these guys embrace that. They want to play that kind of football. They’re calling for it, and that makes me really happy.”

As a measurement of physicality, “opponents knocked out of games” is an admittedly crude one. The timing of many injuries is random. Weather can be a factor. So can usage.

But since Week 14, when a string of Steelers departures helped spark a Ravens rally, the disparity in injury reports has been glaring. In Pittsburgh’s 27-22 win in Baltimore, it lost tight end Darnell Washington, former Ravens inside linebacker Malik Harrison and left tackle Andrus Peat to injuries. Defensive lineman Keeanu Benton, slot cornerback Brandon Echols, former Ravens inside linebacker Patrick Queen and former Ravens safety Chuck Clark also were briefly sidelined before returning.

A week later, injuries knocked Cincinnati Bengals right tackle Amarius Mims and defensive lineman Kris Jenkins out of a 24-0 loss to the Ravens.

A week after that, over a half-dozen New England Patriots contributors, including running back TreVeyon Henderson, wide receiver Kayshon Boutte and defensive tackle Khyiris Tonga, left early with injuries. Other starters, like right tackle Morgan Moses, came back despite obvious limitations.

“A lot of guys went down,” Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said after the 28-24 comeback win in Baltimore. “A lot of guys stepped up.”

The Ravens have not been invulnerable to bodily harm. New England sidelined the Ravens’ most important player, quarterback Lamar Jackson, with a shot to his back in their Week 16 matchup. Rookie inside linebacker Teddye Buchanan tore his ACL in Cincinnati, while cornerback Chidobe Awuzie hurt his foot. Other players have limped to the final whistle of games.

But the Ravens have generally won the war of attrition. And now they’re starting to win the battles in both trenches. Since Week 10, the Ravens’ run defense ranks first in the NFL in expected points added per carry, third in success rate, third in yards per carry allowed (3.7) to designed runs and fourth in yards allowed per game (72.3) to designed runs, according to analytics site RBSDM.com.

“In football, the more physical teams are usually going to come out on top,” safety Kyle Hamilton said Wednesday. “So that’s kind of what we preach and try to go out there and put on tape.”

On offense, though, is where the Ravens finally look like the Ravens of yesteryear. Since Week 14, they’ve rushed for an NFL-high 884 yards. The gap between them and the second-place Los Angeles Rams (237 yards) is roughly equivalent to the gap between the Rams and the 24th-place New Orleans Saints in that span.

Even with Jackson sidelined for the past six quarters, the Ravens’ rushing attack leads the league in EPA per carry and is third in success rate over the past four weeks, according to RBSDM.com. Henry has rushed for at least 100 yards in three straight games and for progressively more yardage in five straight, highlighted by his 36-carry, 216-yard performance Saturday.

“I think that we did a lot of great things,” tight end Mark Andrews said Wednesday. “When the guys up front are playing the way they did, it was really incredible watching that film and seeing what they were doing. Obviously, Derrick getting downhill, and everybody just fighting their butts off — really, the energy all around on offense was top notch. I just think, for us, building on that, continuing to be efficient and focusing on our jobs will carry us through."

The Ravens’ most important test of the season is like the one they aced last January, another win-or-go-home game against Pittsburgh. In that 28-14 wild-card-round win, the Ravens rushed for a franchise-record 299 yards (6 per carry) and held Pittsburgh’s ground game to just 29.

With rookie defensive tackle Derrick Harmon back in the lineup, the Steelers look better prepared to stop the Ravens than they did in Week 14, when they allowed 217 rushing yards, their second most all season. And under coach Mike Tomlin, Harbaugh’s longtime AFC North nemesis, Pittsburgh has frustrated elite Ravens teams with a mix of good game-planning and better fundamentals.

“It’s the football fundamentals, usually, that go into deciding games like this,” Harbaugh acknowledged Wednesday. But there is always a tiebreaker, one the Ravens have fought for with their twice-a-week lifts and early-season padded practices.

“I think anytime you talk about fundamentals, it’s: Who can execute them the best? And then: Who’s going to be the most physical?” right tackle Roger Rosengarten said Wednesday. “I think for us, last week, that’s where we really excelled.”