In an NFC second-round game on Sunday, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matt Stafford threw for more yards than quarterback Jalen Hurts has in the Philadelphia Eagles’ two postseason games combined.

Stafford passed for 324 yards in the snow. But the Rams’ season ended in a 28-22 loss to Philadelphia, which got 128 passing yards from Hurts.

The previous week, the Eagles defeated the Green Bay Packers 22-10 in a Wild-Card Weekend game with Hurts throwing for 131 yards.

But Philadelphia ran for 454 yards, with Hurts contributing 106, in the two victories and will play the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.

“I think he’s doing the things they need to do to win,” Hurts’ coach at Alabama, Nick Saban, said during an appearance on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show” on Monday. “They’re a running football team. That’s what the Philadelphia Eagles are. They got Saquon Barkley. They run it. Jalen can run it, which he had a big play last night as a runner. So you got to make people defend that, and then you got to throw the ball effectively enough in play-action game. And I think Jalen is a good enough passer to do all those things.”

Hurts opened the scoring against Los Angeles with a 44-yard run. But he also endured seven sacks in the contest, the most in one game of his career. During the regular season, opposing pass-rushers sacked Hurts 38 times, the 11th-most in the NFL.

“When Jalen was with us, we would have team and seven-on-seven,” Saban said, “and I would say, ‘You cannot run. You cannot scramble. You have to throw the ball on time.’ Because these guys are so athletic, they see the rush coming, and they think they can scramble and get out of it. And a couple of those sacks that he took last night, he took them because, in normal circumstances – no snow, no bad knee, all that – he probably would have been able to escape and get away and make a play. And he’s done that so much in his career, it’s hard to tell a guy, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’

“I was trying to train him to become a better on-time passer by not allowing him to do it in practice, and I think he improved in that regard, but he’s still a great athlete, and those guys are going to make plays and you can’t take that away from them.”

Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni doesn’t want to take that away from Hurts. On Monday, Sirianni said Hurts’ sacks normally are more than offset by the plays he makes with the football in his hands after the optimum time to throw has passed.

“He has this unique ability to get out of trouble and create plays,” Sirianni said. “I think it’s easy to look at ‘Oh, he got sacked this many times’ or ‘He got sacked that many times,’ and not account for all the rushing yards that he’s had when he’s been able to extend. …

“You’re going to have a little bit of that balance. There’s going to be times when they finish on the sack as well. But I know how many plays he’s made with his feet. And that doesn’t just mean you extend and make a play running. It’s also the ones he extends and throws and finds the guy down the field. …

“He takes some heat sometimes about taking sacks, but we don’t account for all the times that he makes big plays he makes big plays out of it as well. It’s just a unique ability that he has. There’s not a lot of guys that have it. He’s unique in that and has an unbelievable feel of how to extend the plays. And again the efficiency that he’s playing quarterback with and the way he’s taking care of the football gives us a chance to win every single week.”

But as Saban mentioned, Hurts’ “unique ability” might have been compromised by a “bad knee” brought on by the sacks by the Rams, particularly one in the third quarter that caused Hurts to visit the sideline medical tent to have his left knee examined.

On Monday, Sirianni addressed the injuries to Hurts and rookie cornerback Quinyon Mitchell, who left Sunday’s game because of a shoulder injury.

“I know those guys will do everything they can do to be at the top part of their game on Sunday,” Sirianni said. “And so I’m confident in our training staff. I’m confident in those guys. We’ll see how that goes as the week goes on.”

Sunday’s game was Hurts’ second back in the Philadelphia lineup after missing the final two games of the regular season. Hurts sustained a concussion while running with the football during a 36-33 loss to Washington on Dec. 22.

The Commanders and Eagles will square off at 2 p.m. Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. FOX will televise the game. The winner of the contest will represent the NFC in Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9.

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