More than a few people did a double take, and some probably laughed out loud, when Alabama coach Nick Saban announced the hiring of Lane Kiffin as his offensive coordinator in January.

Saban and Kiffin together, on the same staff? What’s next? Lil Wayne, who once dropped Kiffin's name in a rap lyric, opening for Saban's beloved Eagles?

Seriously, how many people would have guessed that Kiffin would be calling plays and producing the kind of wide-open offense we haven’t seen at Alabama under Saban?

Sure, the Crimson Tide have been plenty productive offensively in the past under Saban. In fact, they were the only team in the SEC each of the past three seasons to average more than 200 rushing and passing yards per game.

Air Kiffin, though, has Alabama throwing for 335.8 yards per game and averaging 594.3 per game heading into Saturday's first true road test against No. 11 Ole Miss.

It’s not just the eye-popping numbers that make this version of the Alabama offense different from anything we’ve seen under Saban. It’s the way the Tide are going about it. They are rolling quarterback Blake Sims out of the pocket, emptying the backfield, putting running backs in the slot, splitting tight ends out wide, throwing screens to receivers -- and gasp! -- even going hurry-up.

And then, when the situation calls for it, they can still come back and hammer away with downhill, power football as well as anybody.

“Lane’s made them more difficult to defend, no question,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “They’ve always been able to line up and beat you just because they were better. But you watch them now and they’re doing things and you’re getting looks that you never got from them in the past.”

When Freeze was at Ole Miss the first time as an assistant, then-head coach Ed Orgeron had him travel to the West Coast and spend a week with the Oakland Raiders when Kiffin was their head coach.

“I can tell you now: Lane is sharp,” Freeze said. “I know a lot of people get caught up in some of the things that happened and some of the things he said when he was at Tennessee, but from a coaching talent standpoint, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that Saban hired him.”

Saban has a unique ability to filter through all the clutter, as he would call it, and focus on what matters. Besides, it wasn’t like Saban was hiring Kiffin to be the face of the program.

At Alabama, there’s only one face of the program.

In this case, all that mattered was that Kiffin had the intellect -- not to mention the swagger and thick skin -- to take the Alabama offense to another level in this new era of college football-turned-ice hockey.

Saban, for all the stories you hear about him being a control freak, relishes being challenged by his assistants. He is constantly looking for new ideas, trying to stay ahead of the game and thinking outside the box. He is old-school in a lot of ways and is on record as saying he doesn’t like the direction -- or how fast -- the game is moving.

But that doesn’t mean he’s going to stubbornly sit around without adapting.

In Kiffin, he has found the best of both worlds -- somebody who is progressive offensively and also supremely self-confident and brash enough to stand up to Saban. Deep down, Saban appreciates that brashness. He might not show it all the time, and anybody who’s coached under him better have a thick pair of earmuffs, but Saban was once a brash young coach too.

Some jobs are easier than others, and there’s a reason Kiffin is the fourth offensive coordinator under Saban at Alabama in eight years.

Never mind that the Tide have won three national championships under two of Kiffin’s predecessors. Saban spends about as much time thinking about what’s happened in the past as he does thumping to the beat of Lil Wayne.

So if you look deeper, the Saban-Kiffin pairing isn’t as odd as it looked nine months ago. In fact, Saban was interested in hiring Kiffin as his offensive coordinator when he first got to Alabama in 2007, but the USC assistant wound up getting the Raiders’ head-coaching job a few weeks later.

While Kiffin would go on to make headlines at Tennessee by calling out Urban Meyer, racking up secondary violations and generally being the Eddie Haskell of the SEC, what resonated with Saban was what he did between the white lines.

In particular, Saban remembered quarterback Jonathan Crompton during the recruiting process when Saban was at LSU and felt Crompton was an excellent prospect. But at Tennessee, Crompton had struggled until his senior season, when Kiffin came in and turned him around. What’s more, Saban remembered how Tennessee, a year removed from going 5-7, beat Georgia and South Carolina and came within a blocked field goal of upsetting his No. 1 Crimson Tide at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

As legend has it, Kiffin waltzed to midfield after that bitter 12-10 loss and brazenly told Saban, “We’ll get you next year.”

Well, here they are together again, this time on the same side of the field. Who would have thunk it?

That’s easy. Saban.