Updated 9:40 p.m. ET, Monday, Dec. 3

The beatings go on.

Year after year, the inherent violence that is such an integral part of pro football turns seemingly legitimate contenders into decimated pretenders with a barrage of broken bones and torn ligaments that dramatically alter the league standings on a weekly basis.

Last year before the regular season started, down went four-time league MVP Peyton Manning, the victim of a neck injury that quickly set the wheels in motion for a major makeover for a Colts team that had become a model of steady success under the future Hall of Famer’s stellar direction.

This year before the regular season started, down went another NFL superstar on the other side of the ball, Ravens OLB and Pro Football Weekly 2011 Defensive MVP Terrell Suggs, who suffered a torn Achilles in early May, immediately triggering the likelihood that Suggs would, at the very least, miss a significant portion of the ’12 season.

In the months and weeks that have followed, injuries of all shapes and sizes have taken their toll on teams in varying degrees, setting the stage for Pro Football Weekly’s annual team-by-team injury analysis.

Using a formula that takes into account various factors (injured starters, quantity and quality of players injured, as well as specific input from a hand-picked group of established league talent evaluators), PFW has ranked the teams from those most affected by injuries to least affected, up through Week 13’s action.

After crunching the numbers and carefully assessing our extensive research, it would appear major injury epidemics have not nearly been as sure a recipe for disaster as in the past, with three of the top four hardest-hit teams in our rankings still very much alive for playoff berths with the season’s final month just getting under way.