By JOHN ZENOR
HOOVER, Ala. (AP) â Itâs easier for Alabama to be humble now.
The Crimson Tide can thank Clemson for that, at least. Thereâs nothing like a 44-16 drubbing in the national championship game to strip away any feelings of invincibility and self-satisfaction that come from scarcely getting challenged during the regular season on the way to another Southeastern Conference title.
âI know it sounds bad, but Iâm glad I had that opportunity to feel a loss like that, because what can you learn from winning?â Tide quarterback and Heisman Trophy runner-up Tua Tagovailoa said Wednesday at Southeastern Conference media days. âYou canât learn as much. But when you lose, you start appreciating things a lot more. Many lessons have been learned from that loss.â
Itâs a silver lining of sorts from a painful performance that rattled Nick Sabanâs dynasty and made it clear Clemson is a challenger for the label of college footballâs dominant program.
The defense was abused by Trevor Lawrence and the Tigers and allowed 300-plus yards passing in each of its last three games. Tagovailoa â who spent most fourth quarters during the season as a spectator â was intercepted twice, including a pick-six on Alabamaâs opening series.
It didnât get much better from that point.
But the end result doesnât change the expectations for a team seeking its sixth national title under Saban and a fifth SEC title in six years.
Led by Tagovailoa, wide receiver Jerry Jeudy and linebacker Dylan Moses, Alabama approaches this season as one of the national favorites as usual.
Plus, itâs easier to soul-search and improve after such a loss than while celebrating yet another triumph.
âWhether or not people were worried about personal outcomes more than team outcomes, itâs always hard to judge that,â Saban said. âBut it seems like we had a lot of distractions at the end of the year. So hopefully we learned from those scenarios, and it will help us do the things that we need to do to be able to play to our full potential throughout this season.â
This team has a second straight year of huge staff turnover with seven new coaches, including new offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian and newly elevated defensive coordinator Pete Golding.
The Tide also lost seven underclassmen to the NFL, including first-round picks Quinnen Williams, Jonah Williams and Josh Jacobs.
The nonconference schedule isnât particularly daunting, with games against Duke, New Mexico State, Southern Miss and Western Carolina.
The challenge will be maintaining focus until the end. Alabama might have coasted at times down the stretch after a 29-0 rout of LSU that secured a spot in the SEC championship game with three games left. It didnât really matter until the competition became elite, starting with Georgia, which jumped ahead by two touchdowns.
âI think it comes down to how we prepared the second half of the season as a team,â Tagovailoa said. âWe were goal-oriented the second half of the season, meaning we played looking at the scoreboard. If the scoreboard was good to us, we kind of eased off and we let the second guys go in and we werenât playing the way we were supposed to be playing.
âWeâd only play for two or three quarters, and then weâd let off the gas.â
Alabama survived against Georgia and again in the national semifinals against Oklahoma . Then the engine sputtered from the get-go versus Clemson, which could match Alabamaâs wealth of talent on both sides of the ball.
Moses said things like media attention, accolades and worrying about the NFL draft can be distractions.
âI do wish I could have it back,â the linebacker said. âI really wish I could have the whole month of December back in a sense, so we could look at Oklahoma and Clemson at the same time and try to prepare ourselves for it. Obviously, during the game we werenât prepared for it and Clemson got the best of us that day. Kudos to them. From that point on, we learned from our mistakes and weâre trying to get better.â
___
More AP college football: HERE and TWITTER.