The Eagles won’t say it, but their win over the Titans shows they can win the Super Bowl

His head wrapped in a wide, white headband, his face expressionless, Jalen Hurts moved from one Tennessee Titans player to another as he lingered near the 50-yard line at Lincoln Financial Field.

He shook hands with, among other players, Malik Willis, their rookie quarterback. But at all times, he neither smiled nor laughed, even though he had thrown for 380 yards and three touchdowns, even though the Eagles had thrashed Tennessee, 35-10, even though they were now 11-1 and should be regarded as Super Bowl favorites.

This was nothing unusual for Hurts, of course. After each game, his sartorial expressiveness tends to exceed his verbal expressiveness, and Sunday was no different. He donned a red tracksuit for his postgame news conference, as if he were an ‘80s rapper or a Royal Tenenbaum, but his words and answers fit the tone that he helps to maintain around this team.

The Titans had been touted as the Eagles’ sternest test so far this season, as a team stout enough to beat them by running the ball with Derrick Henry, by matching their strength and aggressiveness at the line of scrimmage, by grinding them into so much sand. That was the caution. That was a reasonable way to view this game. That was not at all what happened.

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“I’ve heard it within the building in terms of motivation or whatever,” Hurts said, referring to the notion that the Titans would be a challenging opponent because of their toughness. “But we control the things that we can. I know I damn sure try to control the things that I can. We know who we are as a football team. We know what we want to be and what we desire to be. It comes down to what we do and how we respond to the things that are thrown in our face.”

Their response Sunday was a performance so dominant — despite the 11 penalties that they committed — that it changed the manner in which they and their season ought to be viewed.

If it was reasonable to think, back in training camp and even into September, that the Eagles would be a playoff team, that standard has since become too low for them. Now, all the markers of a truly great season — the NFC championship game, a berth in Super Bowl LVII, a victory in Super Bowl LVII — have gone from being a possibility to the baseline expectation. Now, anything short of a pilgrimage to Glendale, Ariz., in mid-February will be a disappointment.

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The Eagles themselves wouldn’t admit to thinking about themselves in those lofty terms. From Jason Kelce to Brandon Graham, from Hurts to T.J. Edwards, there’s enough maturity and leadership in their locker room that they keep saying the right things about the value of preparation and their pursuit of excellence and, as Hurts mentioned, the need to control what they can control.

Their play reflects that calm, that settledness. They have the best turnover differential in the NFL. Hurts has had just three passes intercepted all season, and even Sunday, in averaging more than 13 yards per completion, in finding A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith deep downfield again and again, in getting oodles of time in the pocket thanks to his offensive line, he never made anything that would have qualified as a dangerous or risky throw.

“It’s all a thing of trust,” he said, “and it goes back to the preparation.”

But the signs that they have a good sense of how good they are and how good they can be still reveal themselves. At his locker, left tackle Jordan Mailata was practically vibrating with anger … after a game that the Eagles had won by 25 points over a team that had been 7-4.

“It’s tough, man,” Mailata said. “I’ve got to stop doing interviews after the game. I’m too fired up. I’m just saying, I find it hard to call this a win right now. I feel like we [expletive] lost with all those penalties. I feel like we lost. It’s hard to be happy.”

Kelce insisted that the win over the Titans “does not change anything to me. … It doesn’t change any expectations on my end.” And that’s likely true, because Kelce arrived at the stadium for Sunday’s game clad in wraparound sunglasses, a mesh T-shirt, and shorts so tight that they had to be cutting off blood flow to his groin area.

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It was a costume that mimicked Doug Whitmore, Sean Astin’s meathead bodybuilder in the movie 50 First Dates, and Kelce wouldn’t have worn such an outfit if he hadn’t been pretty confident that the Eagles were going to put it to the Titans. Which they did.

“That was,” coach Nick Sirianni said, “a pretty complete game for us.”

It was their best game of what has the chance to be a special season. The Eagles won’t say it, but everyone else can and should. This is a team that can win a championship, and it has become a team that probably should.