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MINNEAPOLIS — John Harbaugh didn’t want to cry. Really, he didn’t. He assured reporters there was no leakage, a claim his players corroborated afterward. But there was something welling up deep within the longtime coach as he addressed a winning Ravens locker room Sunday afternoon.

“At the end of the game, I was pretty choked up inside,” Harbaugh said a few minutes later inside U.S. Bank Stadium. “I didn’t shed a tear. I wouldn’t let that happen.”

A part of him seemed to realize the absurdity of his emotionality. The Ravens are 4-5, after all. They look good enough to win the AFC North but not the Super Bowl. Their offense is inconsistent. Their defense is flawed.

But the rewards of this season’s trials and tribulations, of the Ravens’ good and bad, of the NFL’s ups and downs — everything seemed to crystallize after a 27-19 win over the Minnesota Vikings (4-5).

“Just what these guys — just how hard they fought and how much they believed and how much courage they showed,” Harbaugh said.

The Ravens still have a ways to go. But look at how far they’ve come in just under a month’s time, from 1-5 to 4-5, from a playoff long shot to perhaps AFC North favorites. According to The New York Times’ playoff simulator, the Ravens have 58% odds of winning the division for a third consecutive year. If the AFC North-leading Pittsburgh Steelers lose Sunday night to the Los Angeles Chargers, those chances would rise to 64%.

The Ravens don’t have to win pretty to get to the finish line. They just have to win. They can’t change how they played over the season’s first six weeks. But they can’t let that affect their next eight weeks, either.

“Early in the season, it wasn’t looking too good,” wide receiver Tylan Wallace said. “I think just how much we’ve fought and came back over all that adversity we had going through, I think obviously that just shows how much [Harbaugh] cares about the team and how much we fight. So props to him. I think this shows all that we’ve been through and where we’re at now.”

Sunday’s win over a talented, if inconsistent, Vikings team did not mark some kind of breakthrough. The Ravens were outgained 365-321. They didn’t score a touchdown until the third quarter. They had to hold their breath as Minnesota quarterback J.J. McCarthy (20-for-42 for 248 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions) wheeled around on a fourth-and-4 scramble in the game’s final minute, finally exhaling as his last pass fell incomplete near midfield.

But a third straight win did cement a blueprint for the foreseeable future. The Ravens do not have to be elite, as they were in so many blowouts last season. They’ll settle for doing the simple things well enough: blocking, tackling, communicating, avoiding penalties.

Considering the Ravens’ schedule — and the fact that they’re the NFL’s only team that employs Lamar Jackson as quarterback — that should be enough. Next weekend, they’ll travel to Cleveland to face a Browns team that allowed just 169 yards to the New York Jets ... and still lost handily on Sunday.

After that, the Ravens will come back to Baltimore to face the Jets, who won’t have traded-away cornerback Sauce Gardner, or defensive lineman Quinnen Williams, or much of a hope at quarterback. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, they’ll host the Cincinnati Bengals, whose historically awful defense has overwhelmed the feel-good vibes of longtime Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco’s age-40 renaissance.

There are no gimme wins in the NFL. Only a year ago, the Ravens left Cleveland with a loss to a Jameis Winston-led Browns team. But the Ravens’ early-season hole has at least given them an awareness and an appreciation of how small their margins are.

“We could be undefeated and still feel like we have stuff to do,” said safety Kyle Hamilton, who had two of the Ravens’ 14 passes defended. “Not trying to bring up the past, but I think partially what got us to 1-5 was the fact that we came into the season maybe thinking — and I’m not speaking for everybody — but, ‘We’re the Baltimore Ravens. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do that. Teams are just going to lay down and let us win games,’ and that’s not how it is in this league. So we got punched in the mouth early in the season, but now I think we’re responding well. We’ll just have that scar tissue going forward when we just start stacking wins."

It doesn’t matter how they come together, or when. On Sunday, it was the third quarter. Trailing 10-9 at halftime, the Ravens got into scoring range on their first four drives, coming away with two touchdowns and a field goal. A 1-yard run by running back Justice Hill midway through the third quarter gave the Ravens their first two-possession lead of the game, and a 2-yard catch by tight end Mark Andrews early in the fourth quarter capped a six-minute march that pushed the Ravens’ advantage to 27-13.

Their defense and special teams matched them highlight for highlight. Cornerback Marlon Humphrey’s interception of a deep shot from McCarthy to wide receiver Justin Jefferson set up a go-ahead field goal by rookie kicker Tyler Loop, and rookie safety Keondre Jackson’s forced fumble and recovery on the subsequent kickoff gave the Ravens a short field for Hill’s touchdown.

“The Raven standard of football,” said Lamar Jackson, who finished 17-for-29 for 176 yards and a touchdown and had nine carries for 36 yards on a quiet afternoon.

For most of Sunday, the Ravens just refused to beat themselves. Only five penalties. (The Vikings had 13.) No turnovers. (The Vikings had three, plus three failed fourth downs.) There were drops, yes, and a couple of fortunate fumble bounces, but good teams make their own luck.

Over the first third of this season, the Ravens were not a good team. They did not enjoy good luck, not with injuries or turnovers or their schedule. Now their fortune is starting to change. As Harbaugh spoke postgame, there was an understanding in the locker room of why.

“This team has high expectations,” fullback Patrick Ricard said. “To start the season just where we were, to where we’re at now, this is how we all thought the year would be going — not having five losses out of the first six games, and then try to dig ourselves out. So I think it’s just a lot of emotions.”

Added center Tyler Linderbaum: “We have a lot of belief in this locker room, belief in the coaching staff, belief in the players that we can turn this ship around.”

The Ravens are still two wins away from a winning record and likely at least five wins from a playoff berth. Momentum goes only so far in the NFL. The Ravens know their postseason hopes could fade just as quickly as they were rejuvenated. The team forfeited its margin for error long ago.

But, through the pain and suffering of September and October, the Ravens kept their hope. They found their resolve. They are 4-5 because of those struggles. The hope in the Ravens’ locker room, the belief from Harbaugh, is that they will be better off because of those struggles as well.

“Football’s a long season,” Keondre Jackson said. “I just look at it like: It’s better to start off how we did. That seems crazy, but that just makes this season more iconic.”