In a sport as reckless and violent as pro football, nothing is more important than dozens of men bonding together in a commitment to play at a level of controlled aggression that is outside any normal comfort zone.

In a way, it almost makes no sense. In another, it is essential. The more you risk together, the more you succeed.

On such teams, you need extreme personalities at the core. They don’t have to be the very greatest at what they do. But they must set an example that is galvanizing. If the coach and the quarterback are those two men, as Ron Rivera and Alex Smith have become for Washington, the combined impact can have exponential impact.

Their example of toughness, determination and mind-bending risk, combined with personal modesty and team-centered attitudes, are a huge part of why the Washington Football Team, 3-13 last year, just beat the previously undefeated Steelers. Their personalities, more than any brilliance, are driving the 5-7 Washington Football Team toward the top of the NFC East. Most important, they may be building a new culture out of grit for a team that failed to create anything in more than 25 years of chasing flash. Don’t anoint ’em. But salute them.

This season, Rivera coached while undergoing seven weeks of treatments for squamous cell carcinoma, sometimes sitting on the bench even during games because he was too exhausted to continue standing. He took IVs at halftime rather than give a speech and often couldn’t even yell at practice. Sometimes his Riverboat Ron decisions worked. Sometimes, as with a last-second two-point conversion that failed against the Giants, they turned a potential visit to overtime into instant defeat.

But, when any normal person might have said, “Who needs this added grief,” Rivera took risks, stuck his neck out for his team, and then stood accountable. That he did it while looking like an all-in-black, menacingly masked ex-Chicago Bears linebacker — but one with an understanding manner and no shred of vanity — just reinforced the total respect he has always had in his job, regardless of record.

With hindsight, we now see his benching of inexperienced quarterback Dwayne Haskins was done to give young backup Kyle Allen a fair chance at the job while looking for the first chance to give the position back to Smith, who’s passed for more yards than Hall of Famers Steve Young, Troy Aikman and Sonny Jurgensen.

The Smith comeback from a combat- or car-crash-level broken leg — his 17 surgeries, the suggestion that the leg be amputated and even a brush with death during one infection — is now legend. I kept the ESPN documentary on the topic and never plan to watch it again. I just see it on my “saved” list and the images flash back.

What must it be like to have those imagines in your own mind every time you drop back? And what level of will power must it take to put them out of your mind?

At one point on Monday, Smith’s skin was soaked with what looked like a tennis-ball sized splotch of blood underneath his sock, while his white shoe was splattered with drops and rivulets of blood like an abstract painting. Before you could audibly gasp, you realized it was his good leg that was bleeding. Oh, what a fabulous relief — he’s only slashed open his other leg and they’re taping it up tight like a Christmas roast to take home.

So, if you play for Washington, how hard do you play and practice? How likely is it that you will quit in midgame if things go south? How much do you want to avoid blown assignments or stupid penalties when you know the burden of your unprofessionalism falls on these two men?

Go on, let’s try to make up some advanced metrics to measure the impact of all this.

OK, I give up.

The NFL is 22 men in one tangled explosion after another. You can’t find a measurement, or a way to grade the tape, that captures all of it. Who gets the loose ball when a ton of men dive for it, all flying headfirst into a pile? Who holds his block on a pass rusher for an extra millisecond, and does it on all 40-plus passing snaps? Who snags the jump ball when you know you may get flipped and land headfirst?

The Steelers dropped at least a half-dozen passes on Monday and looked increasingly tired through the second half. Part of that was their mere four of days of rest while Washington had 10 — a big advantage. But part of the drops and exhaustion was the result of who hit harder.

Over the decades, I’ve talked to several coaches who all sounded the same note: The NFL is not a safe, or perhaps even sane place to perform. But since you are there, how do you get a team to reach the fever pitch needed to play its best — which is sometimes almost a crazy place?

Joe Gibbs told me how hard it was to tell the difference on film between 90% effort, which looks professional and produces decent results, and championship-level effort. Often, that difference can only be felt on the field level, when the action reaches a higher, frightening speed — even to these men.

How do you play that hard, but still play smart? How do you ignore the score, or the last break, and still power ahead at full force?

At times — and this doesn’t happen often — the force of personal example does the trick. A personal narrative is sometimes so stirring, so inspiring — which, in the NFL, often means so scary — that it brings the best out in others.

Right now — and don’t ask me how long it will last — that’s happening in Washington.

Perhaps Rivera alone would not have been enough to reverse the culture of the Washington franchise, a work environment so poor that it doesn’t need to be described. Maybe this had to be the Smith comeback-of-comebacks season, too. Every Washington player knows that what Smith is risking puts any price they are paying in the shade.

Smith and Rivera are very different, and yet two of a kind. They are people, by NFL standards, that you must “play up to” or be ashamed. Maybe, in Washington, that’s what it took: Both barrels.

In the past, this team has been identified with lack of discipline, overconfidence after the least success, overestimations of its own talent and lots of “quit.” If they’d been a fire brigade and did their work that shabbily, they’d all be embers by now.

So far, this team is different — just different.

However, humility and honesty are also part of the Rivera package. After the Steelers victory, he said his players “bowed their necks and saved the coach’s ass,” referring to Washington’s goal-line stand after his failed fourth-down gamble.

Some wins matter; they are a line in the sand. Time will tell if the next high tide washes away this line. But, for now, as long as Washington continues to play as doggedly as it has, this season will be recalled as a success, and maybe a turning point, too. That doesn’t equal titles — just systematic progress, maybe, at last.

Perhaps indomitable determination, including a kind that may not seem entirely sane to civilian minds, was just the tonic to correct so much that’s been so toxic for so long with this Football Team.

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