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The Baltimore Ravens and the Indianapolis Colts are rivals with bitter history that predates both players. But in an A.F.C. wild-card game that had so many dramatic story lines, it was the Baltimore offense — for which the Ravens have waited several years to assume the team identity as Lewis's defense has aged — that finally broke through a defensive struggle.

The Ravens seized a 24-9 victory, ending a remarkable run by a Colts team that was expected to be one of the worst in the league this season.

"My only focus was to come in and get my team a win — nothing else was planned," said Lewis, who was credited with 13 tackles. "It's one of those things, when you recap it all and try to say what is one of your greatest moments. I knew how it started, but I never knew how it would end here in Baltimore. To go the way it did today, I wouldn't change nothing."

The Ravens might view their reward for the win warily. They will travel to Denver, where the Broncos are the A.F.C.'s top seed, to face a familiar nemesis in the divisional round next Saturday. They have not beaten Peyton Manning since 2001, when the Ravens were the defending Super Bowl champions and Lewis was the dominant defensive player in the game. They are 0-2 against him in the playoffs and lost to him, 34-17, in December. The winner of Saturday's game will advance to the A.F.C. championship game, which the Ravens narrowly lost to the Patriots last year.

First the Ravens had to dispatch Manning's successor in Indianapolis. Luck was one of three rookie quarterbacks who led their teams into the playoffs this season, and the Colts — a young, rebuilding unit that last year won only two games — made it in part because of Luck's cool. He led seven second-half winning rallies from a tie or deficit this season. And he executed several superb drives on Sunday, doubling Baltimore's time of possession by the end of the third quarter.

But perhaps it was fitting that on the day Lewis took his final herky-jerky walk through the tunnel for a rapturous pregame dance, his right arm encased in an enormous brace to stabilize the torn right triceps that cost him a large part of the season, the Ravens' defense held up just enough to allow its own offense to survive two fumbles by Ray Rice and to give Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco and receiver Anquan Boldin their own showcase.

Facing a nearly nonstop blitz in the first half, Luck and the Colts had to do without the offensive coordinator Bruce Arians, who was hospitalized with nausea and headaches. Luck was sacked and fumbled in Baltimore territory in the first quarter, stopping one drive. Then the Ravens' defense forced three field goals by the Colts' Adam Vinatieri and held on an early fourth-quarter drive that ended with a rare Vinatieri miss.

That was all the breathing room Flacco needed. The Ravens' offense had been so wobbly this season that Coach John Harbaugh made the surprising decision to fire the offensive coordinator Cam Cameron in the last month of the regular season. In his place, Harbaugh installed Jim Caldwell, the former Colts head coach who took them to one Super Bowl and was fired after last season's Manning-less collapse. That gave Chuck Pagano, the former Ravens defensive coordinator, his first head-coaching opportunity, and his return from leukemia treatment had buoyed the team emotionally.

For much of the first half, the Ravens' offense struggled as much as the Colts'. Rice's first fumble came on the Ravens' first drive, which ended at the Colts' 11-yard line. Then the Ravens settled for a short field goal to take an early lead. But after Vinatieri had tied the score, Flacco, under pressure from the Colts' rush, hit Rice with a short screen pass on second-and-10. In the open field, Rice juked Tom Zbikowski, the former Ravens safety now playing for the Colts, and took off for 47 yards. On the next play, Vonta Leach scored on a 2-yard run.

The Ravens never lost that lead, but Luck's resilience — and his ability to extend plays with his scrambling — kept the pressure on Baltimore. Pagano told his team to re"Because we've got the foundation, the foundation is set," Pagano said. "We said we were going to build one on rock and not on sand, because you can weather storms like this and you can learn from times like this."

In the third quarter, the Ravens took shots down the field to soften the tight coverage the Colts had played in the first half. Boldin, who was brought to the Ravens three years ago precisely to give Flacco a reliable target, caught five passes for 145 yards that exposed an inescapable truth for the Colts: their defense was ranked 21st against the pass. He caught two passes, including a 46-yarder down the right sideline, on a drive that gave the Ravens their first real breathing room, with a 17-6 lead. Boldin caught an 18-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter that essentially sealed the victory.

"I went up to him before the game and told him I feel like 200 yards today," Boldin said of a conversation with Flacco. "I don't know if he thought I was joking."

Considering the Broncos will be favored next Saturday, Lewis could have just one game remaining in his career. Luck will have many more. But when Ravens cornerback Cary Williams intercepted a pass by Luck late in the fourth quarter to end the Colts' final real threat, the defense that Lewis had lent so much emotion and physicality since the year the Ravens arrived in Baltimore had briefly stopped the onslaught of offense that Luck will author.

The Ravens inserted Lewis for the final play, an offensive victory formation, allowing him one more dance in Baltimore — an idea that occurred to Harbaugh only when the offense got the ball back, although he said that the owner Steve Bisciotti suggested putting Lewis at running back. But before Lewis went back on the field, he turned to the crowd and pounded his heart. For one more game at least, the Ravens and their heart will keep beating together.