For a few minutes, the running backs’ corner of the locker room was thick with the victorious aroma of smoke.

On his 31st birthday, Derrick Henry permitted himself half a cigar with Keaton Mitchell and Rasheen Ali. When a reporter registered surprise that Henry — a man who famously steers clear of gluten, dairy and artificial sweeteners in his diet — would smoke, Henry set the record straight.

“If you knew me, we actually smoked cigars at ’Bama when we beat Tennessee,” he said. “So I’ve been doing this since college.”

His victory cigar history may go way back but now, in his ninth pro season, Henry knows how hard it is to get to them. He has never played in the Super Bowl. It has been three years since he was even in the playoffs. These moments of celebration are rare and fleeting.

No team in these playoffs can appreciate how hard it is to get back in position to make a run as much as the Ravens.

Last January, there was real pain here. A locker room that felt — no, knew — it was good enough to win it all came achingly short in an AFC title game loss to the Chiefs. That sting has lingered for Baltimore, which now knows the magnitude of every opportunity it gets.

A year ago, Roquan Smith’s thousand-yard stare sitting in the Ravens’ press room spoke volumes, even before he said what was on his mind. “You just think about how hard it is to make it back to this position,” he said then.

It has stuck with him still.

“I’ve been thinking about it all offseason,” Smith said Saturday night. “But gotta handle the little things by the little things. Once we get there, we’ll get there.”

That mantra took various forms from Ravens players who share the bitter memories from how their last playoff run ended.

Kyle Van Noy spoke about how, though the team clinched the AFC North for the second straight year (no small feat given the competition), “we’re not guaranteed anything after next week.”

Lamar Jackson heralded the “hat and T-shirt game” for his squad but added: “We got the job done, but the job is undone.”

Really, the job has felt undone for nearly a whole year. The No. 3 seed the Ravens earned with their 12-5 record and historic offense allows them to pick up where they left off. Even though this regular season is an achievement unto itself, I don’t know if it tells us much about the Ravens that we didn’t know already.

Jackson has reached new heights as a passer with his 41 touchdowns and 4,000 passing yards against just four interceptions. But he’s always had an incredibly high ceiling, and another regular-season MVP wouldn’t feel complete without a Lombardi Trophy to go with it.

The run game set an NFL record with yards per rush, and Henry’s season was one of the all-time great campaigns in Ravens history. And yet the run game has been a strength of this franchise for years.

The defense took a circuitous route that made many question if defensive coordinator Zach Orr was the guy. But it has righted the ship in a way that all but confirms its talent and direction. Van Noy surprised with an age-defying 12.5 sacks and Marlon Humphrey’s six picks were a personal renaissance, but the defense they’ve been in the last four weeks of the season is the defense we expected at the start.

If everyone is honest, we’ve all been waiting for what happens next — to see if the talent that has won them so many regular-season games will finally translate into a return to the Super Bowl stage. It’s where a team this talented belongs, even if the No. 1-seeded Chiefs still loom in the distance on the other side of the AFC bracket.

At the beginning of the season, I wondered how coming so close might affect the Ravens and if it could propel them. We’ve seen the power of that motivation before, when they came up short in 2011 only to break through in 2012. The 2012 team had fewer regular-season wins, just 10 to the previous campaign’s 12, but it survived a heavyweight fight with Denver, broke through against the Patriots (the Chiefs of that day) and trumped the 49ers in New Orleans to validate the championship-level talent it had.

If you look at this season, there are compelling connections to that history, not the least of which is John Harbaugh is still the head coach.

The Super Bowl is again being staged in New Orleans. To get there, the Ravens will likely have to go through a Jim Harbaugh-coached team (the Chargers) and play two road games in cold-weather cities (Buffalo and Kansas City, the higher-seeded teams). One of those 2012 heroes, Jacoby Jones, is a name on their helmets, one of the two deaths in the Ravens family that this team carries with it on every down.

The Ravens know to savor their victories. And they know how hard they have to fight for the next ones, too.

“Last year, when we were in the locker room after the AFC championship game, we knew we had a long road to go to get back to this very point,” John Harbaugh said. “You get back to the playoffs with the opportunity to take the next step.”

That next step has been such a long time coming. And, now that it’s close at hand, the Ravens — with four wins in as many weeks — look like a team prepared to seize the moment.

“I’m grateful. I love it. This is why I came here,” Henry said. “We got the first goal done, which is win the division. There’s still much more that we can accomplish.”

The cigar dangled from his hand. Its embers had flickered out. Maybe he’ll light another one, if all goes well, in just a few weeks.