The scribble-scratch of a notepad pushed against the silence.Parks Frazier waited. A quarterbacks coach entering his second year in Philadelphia, Frazier has learned to wait. He knows Jalen Hurts writes everything down. Everything. He has peered at Hurts’ pages and seen “lists on top of lists.” Thoughts in order. Thoughts in rows. Thoughts that form precise questions and more answers on the page.These notes are part of the process Hurts speaks vaguely about nearly every time he sits behind a microphone.“Daily deposits,” he calls it. “Daily efforts.” Little by little. List by list. Frazier called Hurts a “relentless note-taker.” This distinct habit — like Hurts’ marathon phone calls with coaches about a week’s given game plan — underlines how the quarterback breaks broad challenges into digestible tasks.“A challenge is a challenge,” Hurts said on the first day of training camp. “You look at them all the same.”Will the Eagles three-peat as NFC East Champions?Charlotte CarrollThe 2026 season is a challenge, nonetheless. Compile Hurts’ notes and the lists take form: The greatest schematic challenge of his career. He is not merely playing for his seventh play-caller in seven seasons. The Philadelphia Eagles drastically overhauled their playbook after their offense degenerated in 2025, and the technical and philosophical changes Hurts must master demand a departure from the comfort zones of past systems.Kevin Patullo’s firing after one year as offensive coordinator headlined the offense’s mismanagement. But a run game that devolved from first-rate to feckless exposed fundamental issues. Coach Nick Sirianni hired another first-time play-caller, Sean Mannion, to build a brand new system with principles championed by Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay. The Eagles emphasized this reconstruction when they parted ways with longtime offensive line coach and run game coordinator Jeff Stoutland.Hurts did not emerge unscathed. He regressed in the Patullo-led offense and absorbed multiple reports that his reluctance contributed to the system’s stagnancy. This year’s conditions echo the Eagles’ bounce-back from their 2023 collapse to their Super Bowl LIX championship, when Hurts was named the game’s MVP. If Hurts again rebounds in Mannion’s offense, he will have upheld the confidence Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman have insisted has not wavered. It may even result in a second contract extension, something Lurie and Roseman did not offer Hurts this summer.And time is a factor not even Hurts can easily ignore. After an Aug. 7 practice, the entire team sang Hurts a happy 28th birthday. He is reaching the age at which NFL teams historically determine whether a quarterback’s peak years are ahead of him — or behind him. Financially speaking, the Eagles can feasibly offload Hurts’ contract after this season. (Or if by trade, during it.)Hurts avoids addressing such big-picture junctures until they are complete. He politely brushed off a question of such scope in training camp by saying, “Those opportunities that I relish in, they start right now in these moments.” But there was a hint of insight in the way Hurts responded to Lane Johnson’s disclosure that this will be the right tackle’s last season.“I know it takes great courage to say this is the last dance going into it,” Hurts said.Hurts does not deny the weight of the past or the future. He simply refuses to let either pull him from the present.Scrawled within the lines upon lines of Hurts’ notes is an important couplet:100 percent alignment