There is an old maxim that encapsulates Nick Saban’s coaching philosophy, and this past March in the aftermath of his worst loss as Alabama’s coach he repeated it during a news conference.

“You don't just do things until you get it right,” he said. “You do it over and over and over until you can't get it wrong.”

For those who have watched Saban rise to the top of his profession, the saying reveals a lot about a man who isn’t as obsessed with perfection as much as he is driven by the fear of mistakes. After his most impressive victories, Saban won’t hesitate to catalog the errors Alabama made and describe them in exacting detail, seemingly ignoring the fact the Crimson Tide just achieved an overwhelmingly positive result. As others search for ways to praise Saban’s team, he’ll rue its failures and bemoan the penalties it incurred. But nothing causes him greater anguish than giveaways.

As Saban explained three years ago, “If every series ends in a kick you’ve got a pretty good chance.”

To ensure that is the usual outcome, he has instructed his quarterbacks to play it safe and avoid risky passes that could lead to interceptions.

“I think the quarterback goes into it knowing that he doesn’t have to take over a game,” Greg McElroy, the ESPN analyst who manned that position at Alabama from 2009 to 2010, told AL.com in 2016. “He doesn’t have to go out of his way and try to do too much.”

McElroy, AJ McCarron and Jake Coker didn’t. They were game managers. So too was Jalen Hurts, even if he opened a new dimension with his athleticism.

Tua Tagovailoa decidedly is not, as he reaffirmed during SEC Media Days.

“If the shot is there, I am going to take it,” Tagovailoa said. “Don’t expect me to throw a checkdown. I am going to take it.”

Tagovailoa’s declaration came after an offseason when Saban has subtly critiqued the quarterback’s daring approach to the position.

In the spring, Saban said Tagovailoa needed to learn when to throw the ball away, adding, “You can't make a play out of every play.”

Then, in front of reporters at the Hyatt Regency in Hoover last week, Saban continued to question the Hawaiian southpaw’s high-wire style, as the coach referred as much to the small number of interceptions that blemished Tagovailoa’s stat line last season as the numerous highlights that helped vault the Tide’s young gun into contention for the Heisman Trophy.

Speaking of Tagovailoa’s gambles, he said, “Sometimes those things have worked out extremely well. And other times they've led to some disasters. So having a little better judgment about when to say when can be an asset.”

But Tagovailoa’s reputation as a wild stallion in the pocket may be exaggerated. He has actually been rather judicious when surveying the field, as advanced stats from ProFootballFocus.com illustrate. Among players with at least 300 pass attempts in the FBS in 2018, no one had a better adjusted completion percentage on throws of 20 or more air yards than Tagovailoa. Of the 58 passes he launched that traveled into that range, he connected on 32 of them while accounting for 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions.

Yet despite having great success throwing deep, he only did so 16.2 percent of the time, which was the seventh-highest rate among starters in the SEC and hard evidence of the restraint Tagovailoa showed throughout the year.

Still, Saban seems intent on reining him in much in the same way as he did with Hurts. The percentage of Hurts’ throws of 20 or more yards dipped slightly between his freshman and sophomore years — 15.7 to 14.8 — as the former Crimson Tide star took a more risk-averse approach in 2017, his final year as the primary quarterback. After Hurts threw nine interceptions in 2016, he only tossed one the following season, dutifully managing the offense in the conservative fashion Saban has long preferred.

Whether Tagovailoa makes a similar adjustment bears watching.

Last week, Tagovailoa acknowledged, “It’s whatever the defense gives me that I need to take. That was the biggest thing in the second half of the year, especially against Clemson. Looking at the scoreboard, I felt like we needed to score and I just didn’t take what they gave me.”

In that loss to the Tigers that decided the national championship, Tagovailoa threw two interceptions — tied for the most he had in a game all year. Neither one sealed Alabama’s fate that night. But ever since then, Saban has challenged Tagovailoa to play with more caution — to think more about avoiding the monumental mistake instead of making the big play and carry out his role with such care that he can’t do the kind of wrong the Alabama coach aims to prevent.

“Are there things that he can improve on? Saban said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

Rainer Sabin is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin