All eyes are on Tua Tagovailoa entering the 2019 season.

One of college football’s best players, Tagovailoa didn’t exactly end the season well against Clemson. There certainly weren’t many shortcomings from the signal caller last season. However, it should be a concern how much he was hampered by injury down the stretch.

Tuscaloosa News’ Cecil Hurt caught up with Nick Saban during the Tide’s football camps, and Saban indicated that his star QB has “dropped about 15 pounds” since spring ball ended.

Saban issued a sort of a challenge for Tagovailoa during the SEC’s spring meetings last month.

“I think Tua has got to challenge himself a little bit to get back,” Saban said. “I think being hurt was an issue for him at the end of the season and I think he has to challenge himself to get back into great shape and overcome some of the things that happened toward the end of the year. I think he should take the perception that he has a lot to prove relative to how we ended the season. I think our whole team fit into that category.”

The spring meetings comments  came after his constructive criticism following the 2019 NFL Draft.

“I think Tua played, for the first seven or eight games last year, if there… if it’s possible, to play perfectly — take care of the ball, no interceptions, really high completion percentage, take what the defense gives. I think he did that flawlessly in our first seven, eight games,” Saban said during an appearance on the NFL Network. “Then you start thinking about I’m going to make some plays here, I’m going to throw the ball downfield and I think when you get out of that, you start to become more outcome oriented. Worrying about the result, rather than staying with the process and taking what they give you.

“I think you put yourself at risk to make mistakes and I think Tua did that a little down the stretch. I think he learned from that and we want him to be the guy that just makes the decisions that he needs to make to make good plays down in and down out and not force plays down the field and make big plays.”

Obviously, Tagovailoa was going to respond by getting into shape. To hear Saban say that he’s well on his way is certainly good news for the Tide’s offense.