TUSCALOOSA, Alabama — The hiring of Lane Kiffin as Alabama's offensive coordinator brought many questions.

His impact on the Crimson Tide offense, its structure, philosophy and playbook topped those lists. After four spring practices, a few answers are emerging as the team gets a week off for spring break.

First, how much is changing?

"A lot," center Ryan Kelly said. "I mean, obviously have new plays, new formations, stuff like that."

The play-calling process was simplified, receiver Amari Cooper said, since Kiffin replaced Michigan-bound Doug Nussmeier. The former Raider, Tennessee and USC coach has been doing extra instruction during the media viewing periods of the first four spring practices. He's hands on working with the quarterbacks and receivers.

Then there's the national and regional trend of sped up offenses. They're gaining popularity with the offensive success of Auburn, Texas A&M and others.

Alabama tight end Brian Vogler smiled when asked about that possibility at Alabama under Kiffin.

"It's hard for me to say right now if that would work for us. I think we're a team that's made to be maulers," Vogler said. "Guys are just going to be really physical with you, hit you from every aspect of the game and hit you in every direction.

"I just don't know if that's really our style of being speedy and trying to be elusive around everybody and dodge people like other schools do."

Kiffin didn't run the fast-pace game at USC and wasn't a fan of it when asked last summer.

The big-picture decisions like that would come down to Nick Saban. And he didn't sound ready to abandon the pro-style plan at this point.

"We really don't want to go into the spread and have a running quarterback because the downside of that is when you lose that guy, because of the exposure he has, do you have enough guys that can go in there and play at the same level he can play?" Saban said last week.

Getting a few more snaps in wouldn't bother Kelly.

"Anytime we can run more plays it's good for an offense, right?" he said. "But I don't ... obviously, we want to practice faster every day. As the spread offense, stuff like that, it's still the same. We've just been wanting to get more reps in practice. Obviously, reps make us better."

While Auburn ran 15 more plays per game in 2013 (72.4) over 2012, Alabama was right at 63.5. That's down from 64.1 in 2012 and 66.5 the year before that.

Texas A&M ran 73.8 and Ole Miss snapped it 78.3 times a game in 2013.