In the six months since Alabama’s 44-16 shellacking by Clemson in the College Football Playoff National Championship game, Crimson Tide quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has lost 15 pounds and gained a lot of perspective.

“When you win it is a great feeling. But when you lose, it isn’t a great feeling and I think that it was good that we lost because what can you learn if you keep winning?” Tagovailoa told reporters Wednesday at a Southeastern Conference Media Days session in Hoover, Ala.

“You can’t learn as much,” said Tagovailoa, a Saint Louis School graduate.

After the only loss in his 15 starts last season, Tagovailoa said he has learned plenty from the experience.

“Being that we lost, I think it was a good experience for our (entire) team because a lot of us have come back and it (winning) is something that you don’t take for granted now,” Tagovailoa said. “Winning isn’t something that you should take for granted.”

Publicly challenged personally this offseason by head coach Nick Saban, Tagovailoa said he now weighs 215 pounds, down from 230 in March. Moreover, he’s spent more time with the training staff in an effort to avoid injuries; the ones (knee, ankle and hamstring) that have hobbled him at times while also combing through video to reassess and refine decision making and taking ownership of an increased leadership role.

All for a junior season to position the Crimson Tide for another shot at a national championship before heading off to the NFL Draft, where he is widely projected as a first-round pick.

“I think Tua is the kind of guy that’s never really satisfied,” Saban told the media. “And I think he had an outstanding year last year. Are there things that he can improve on? I don’t think there’s any question about that. You know, towards end of the season, we turned the ball over a little bit more offensively than what we had in the first half of the season. And I’m sure that he wants to make sure that the decision-making that led to some of those things are (things) that he can improve on.”

Saban said, “Tua is a great competitor so he’s going to try to make a great play every play. And sometimes those things have worked out extremely well,” witness his off-the-bench, second-half heroics against Georgia in the 2018 title game.

“And, other times, they’ve led to some disasters,” Saban said in reference to multiple interceptions in the 2018 SEC title and 2019 CFP championship games. “So, having a little better judgment about when to say when can be an asset from a health standpoint as well as eliminate negative play standpoint, even though sometimes he’s done that, and it’s worked out great.”

Alabama’s most accomplished teams have been ones where leaders took ownership. “So, we understand that we have to do the same if we want to be successful for this upcoming season,” Tagovailoa said.

Heightened expectations for what an improved and finely focused Tagovailoa might be capable of this season and where he can take the Crimson Tide in the process produced an overflow crowd of fans and frenzied autograph seekers — some toting life-sized cardboard cutouts of Tagovailoa — for his arrival at the Birmingham-area hotel where the meetings are held.

It was rock star-like treatment for Tagovailoa, who was beseeched at every turn. “I don’t see myself a celebrity,” Tagovailoa told reporters later. “Only when I come to things like this.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.