How did Jalen Hurts and the Eagles pile up 55 points en route to a Super Bowl return? It all began with mental warfare.

PHILADELPHIA — Howie Roseman shouted toward Jalen Hurts’ locker.

“You ready to take one?” asked the general manager fresh off masterminding his third Philadelphia Eagles team to advance to the Super Bowl.

The Eagles quarterback — himself off a dominant dual-threat performance in the conference title game — joined his general manager in the assistant coaches annex tucked near the locker room exit.

Shortly after, Hurts lit up a celebratory cigar at his locker. A Wizard of Oz-level funnel of smoke billowed around him.

“Need hats?” Roseman asked his quarterback next, a stack of “NFC Champions” swag in the general manager’s hand.

Swag, confetti and trophy photos energized Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday as the Eagles clinched their second Super Bowl appearance in three years with a resounding 55-23 victory over the Washington Commanders.

Philadelphia had reason to celebrate. But players and coaches were conflicted on when and whether they wanted to.

Sure, they took time for photographs amid room-shaking music and dance circles amid strewn-about clumps of confetti from a field chock-full of them. They indulged in moments of elation so hard to contain that players and coaches regularly interrupted each other’s interviews because they just couldn’t help themselves. Even Hurts stood behind reporters with a sly grin as left tackle Jordan Mailata fielded questions.

But at various points in the postgame glow, reality hit a group of players who, whether or not they were on that 2022 season roster, knew: They do not want to end another season with a Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Eagles were the victims of Kansas City’s first of two current consecutive trophies; they don’t want to be the victims of Kansas City becoming the first team to win three straight Super Bowls.

So as Philadelphia’s offense boat-raced Washington to a conference championship record-setting 55 points and the defense swiped four takeaways, the Eagles practiced more than just the discipline and physicality they believed their division foes could match. They sought to outwit the Commanders — and did. They have a name for that.

“Oh, man,” Mailata said. “That was mental warfare.”

Eagles leveraged trickery atop physicality on road to 55 points

Deception guided the Eagles’ first offensive play.

Philadelphia lined up as if to snap the ball. Then Hurts began shouting, and stepped back toward Barkley with a message. Wide receiver DeVonta Smith motioned left to right as Hurts began to actually field the snap, but Barkley got the pitch.

That Philadelphia’s bell cow received the ball was not surprising. What was surprising: a new call out of the same look from which the Eagles had run a different play in previous games against Washington. Film junkies, good luck.

“When you play two, three times, they kinda get a bead on some of your stuff,” Barkley said. “So we gave them a dummy call and it worked to perfection.”

Receiver A.J. Brown picked up his crack block, tight end Dallas Goedert and Mailata clearing defenders afterward. Multiple Commanders nearly tackled Barkley after a respectable 15 or so yards. But the 2,000-yard rusher instead leveraged his contact balance to break each tackle and take Philadelphia’s first touch a full 60 yards to the house.

Athleticism and grit were necessary, sure. But the extra level of deception arguably elevated the snap from a great play to a game-changer.

“It doesn’t really matter who gets the party started,” said Hurts, who escaped for a 44-yard rushing touchdown on the Eagles’ first series in their divisional-round win over the Los Angeles Rams. “Just for us to gain some momentum [and] gain our rhythm as an offense, and keep going.”

They’d carry that rhythm soon to a fourth-and-5 conversion when Brown gave Marshon Lattimore a release the cornerback had succeeded against earlier in the game. Brown switched his tendency, Lattimore “fell for it” and the receiver hauled in a 31-yard catch to set up Philadelphia’s third touchdown.

And when Barkley took a 22-yarder to his seeming most common place to end a drive, the 1-yard line? The Eagles were ready to keep good on their word to turn their defense’s takeaways into not field goals — as they did off two fumbles last week — but touchdowns.

They stayed calm as a feisty Commanders group flashed its assortment of trash-talk variations, Hurts both reminding teammates the stakes of this game and wryly changing the cadence up to bait Washington’s defense. The Commanders encroached three straight times, risking a touchdown by penalty (yes, it turns out this is real). On the fourth now-below-1-yard try, Hurts scored. Three fumble-gifted possessions became three touchdowns.

The Eagles leaned into mental warfare to create tendencies then break them. And they leaned into mental warfare as they demonstrated the discipline that comes from having been there before, keeping their composure as Washington’s eroded.

The Commanders kept pace until two minutes before the first half, when they were still trailing 14-12. But in the game’s last 32 minutes, the Eagles outscored Washington 41-11. From Barkley’s first-quarter house call and on, Philadelphia never trailed.

The Eagles passed for 246 yards and rushed for another 229. They won the turnover battle, 4-0, and with complementary football they won the game. This wasn’t another lucky-to-escape game as they’d cobble together in recent weeks. This was a complete performance.

“We’ve been saying it all year: No matter how it looks, we’re just trying to get the win,” Brown said. “And today, it was both.”

As Eagles elevate their lone weakness, could they realistically threaten the Chiefs?

Before the conference championship game, conventional wisdom would have favored the Chiefs over the Eagles as Kansas City’s clear quarterback advantage returns to the biggest stage.

But after Sunday? Sure, the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes have earned their 1.5-point Vegas edge, per BetMGM. But the Eagles showed they have all the tools to wreck the three-peat bid and are more than capable of unloading them all in one battle. Now that they can do it — will they?

Philadelphia’s passing game was its lone weakness earlier in the playoffs, likely in part because of the recent concussion and knee injuries (and, he revealed, illness) slowing Hurts. In his most decisive and accurate game since suffering a concussion in December vs. the Commanders, Hurts suppressed that concern, too.

He seemed eager to get that improvement on the record, with a playful shot suggesting that head coach Nick Sirianni rather than offensive coordinator Kellen Moore is responsible for how conservative recent game plans have looked.

“I guess he let me out of my straitjacket a little bit today,” Hurts said with a chuckle.

When asked to clarify what he meant later, he said he’d answer a question about fourth-down strategy instead.

It was impossible not to notice that even as the Hurts-Sirianni tension from last season simmers more calmly, the two nonetheless continue to tell different stories about their partnership. Hurts diverted two questions about Sirianni, including responding to the opening question of his postgame news conference by choosing to thank God rather than reflect on his head coach.

“In terms of a big reflection,” Hurts said, “I don’t know if the time to do that is right now.”

He later said that Sirianni has “done a great job” but declined to elaborate. All of this, after Sirianni devoted more than 500 words to dismissing the notion that Hurts isn’t great because of the cast around him or the passing stat lines that don’t always correlate with the record. He questioned why his quarterback receives so much criticism.

“Winning, at quarterback, is more important than any stat that you go through,” Sirianni said. “I’m sure it’ll be the same thing: ‘Oh, he’s got great players around him.’ Well, you tell me a quarterback that’s won like this that has s*** around him …

“He’s a winner.”

On the importance of winning, Sirianni and Hurts agreed. Each trumpeted the value of wins over statistics, Hurts saying that each person gets to choose their definition of success.

“And what I define it as,” Hurts added, “is winning.”

So as the Eagles checked that box, players threw confetti with their kids while the team plumber sported a Mardi Gras-colored necklace with a highway sign headed south to New Orleans. There was some window for celebration, even as the Eagles hope they achieve Hurts’ definition of success again in two weeks.

They know the cigar smell will fade, the confetti no longer haunting the equipment staff’s laundry loads. None of it satiated the Eagles then and it only partially does now, with Sirianni using versions of the word “hungry” four times in his 17-minute remarks.

“These guys are hungry, and we’ve got one more to go,” Sirianni said. “This is a great feeling. We’ve had this feeling before.

“It just makes you hungrier.”

Again, they’ll leverage mental warfare — but this time, to elevate themselves.