Lane Kiffin needed less than a month to find his new offensive line coach.

The Ole Miss football head coach announced on Monday the hiring of Jake Thornton to lead the front line of the offense. Thornton replaces former offensive line coach Randy Clements, who was fired on April 27, two days after the Rebels annual Grove Bowl.

Thornton spent last season as the run game coordinator and offensive line coach at Gardner-Webb and prior to that, spent two seasons as the offensive line coach at Tennessee Tech.

The hiring of Thornton by Kiffin connects the Nick Saban coaching tree once more. Thornton served as a graduate assistant at Alabama during the Crimson Tide’s National Championship run in 2017.

Kiffin has hired four new assistant coaches following his first season in Oxford where the Rebels finished 5-5 and won the 2021 Outback Bowl over then-No. 7 Indiana.