On the field, the impact is immediate — players can no longer push off — but it is in life’s mundane tasks that the triceps is most appreciated. Reaching up to change a light bulb or to put something on a shelf would be difficult with a torn triceps. It is nearly impossible to push up out of a chair, a reason surgery is almost always recommended in older patients. Warren had to push his chair back from a table whenever he had to write because he could not bend his arm the way he wanted to. Danza was said to have joked that he could not pick his nose.

“Signing a check? Good luck,” the right-handed Berry said of tearing his right triceps. “Brushing your teeth. You don’t think of the little things you do.”

The metal brace Berry had to wear after surgery made getting through airport security difficult. Driving was no better. The brace was so heavy that his arm ached from having to be held high enough to steer. It was so annoying that when Berry ripped his left triceps a year later, he was grateful that it, at least, was not his right one again.

The Ravens said that Lewis’s tear was complete. Surgery is a must in those cases; sometimes nonathletes can try to rehabilitate partial tears without surgery. The good news is that the surgery is fairly straightforward.

According to Gautam Yagnik, the chief of orthopedic surgery at West Kendall Baptist Hospital in Miami-Dade County, Fla., and a specialist in sports medicine, an incision is made in the back of the arm. Holes are usually drilled in the bone at the end of the elbow and, after the end of the torn tendon is identified, sutures are sewed through it. Then doctors sew the torn tendon back down to the bone. There are no fancy screws, and very rarely is a cadaver tendon needed when surgery is performed soon after the injury.

The bad news?

“Of the ones that were repaired, they generally missed a whole season to come back, but most were able to come back and play,” Yagnik said. “It’s not necessarily a career-ending injury, though.”

Lewis had surgery Wednesday, and the Ravens put him on injured reserve with the designation that he could return this season. That seems like wishful thinking even if the Ravens make the Super Bowl because, Glashow said, a tendon is not fully healed for three months. That does not include the time it would take Lewis to regain the normal strength in his arm. Berry and Warren both said it took them about six months. Lewis, 37, has made no announcement about his plans since the injury, but Glashow has one bit of encouragement to offer.

“It’s a lot better to have this,” he said, “than A.C.L.’s.”