The intro wasn’t quite right. The Bryant-Denny Stadium speakers, the way they had for so many Alabama football games before, started playing AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” as the team entered on A-Day.

But then the music stopped. There was Kalen DeBoer, leading the Crimson Tide out to the field for the first time, but in place of the standard intro anthem, “Thunder,” by Imagine Dragons began to play for the 72,358 fans.

Clearly, someone hit the wrong button. As the team stood behind the goal posts preparing to run out, the famous Angus Young guitar lick sounded once again, too late to save the moment from awkwardness.

On a day of transition in Tuscaloosa, the musical snafu might have been the roughest part.

“I think today was probably the day where it just really felt, you know,” DeBoer said after the game. “Seeing the guys coming on the Walk of Champions, just seeing that and feeling the energy and excitement of what it would be on a Saturday. That was a lot of fun. Being in the locker room. Just the excitement.”

Walking around Tuscaloosa, you’d be forgiven early on Saturday for forgetting Nick Saban was gone. Just after noon, fans were out in the streets surrounding Bryant-Denny Stadium, just like usual.

Rama Jama’s had a line out the door, the street vendors were slinging t-shirts and the Pi Phi’s “Saban is Sexy” painted window remained on Paul W. Bryant Drive. Around the corner on Wallace Wade Avenue, Roll Tide Willie was yelling his catchphrases to anyone who would listen, as fans started to file from their tailgates into the stadium.

Under Denny Chimes, Tide fans congregated, ready to see the 2023 team’s permanent captains get their hand and cleat marks preserved in cement.

Saban was there, clad in a checkered Crimson blazer, ready to introduce Jalen Milroe, Dallas Turner and Malachi Moore just as he had for as long as anyone on the current team could remember. But once he started talking, the difference was obvious.

“This is the first time I’ve got to address a group and I’m not the coach,” Saban said. “But I’m one of you. I’m one of the fans now.”

DeBoer was standing near him, waving at the crowd when recognized by Walk of Fame ceremony emcee and Crimson Tide Sports Network play-by-play man Chris Stewart. Just 20 minutes later, as the Tide entered the stadium, the change was even more obvious.

The new coach walked the team in through the front door facing University Avenue. Saban was ferried in elsewhere, on a golf cart, set to watch the game from a suite.

The field itself was off, echoing the nature of a transitional A-Day. A fairway of green ran down the middle of a beat-up, brown gridiron, ending just outside the hash marks, widening enough at the 25-yard lines to encompass the crimson SEC logos.

The format was different. The roster wasn’t divided like it used to be, with DeBoer opting to make the offense white and the defense crimson, and let both sides score points.

After years of defensive battles with a steak dinner on the line, the amount of scoring was a jarring shift.

“A couple reasons, No. 1, I like to look at it as practice No. 15,” DeBoer said earlier in the week, explaining the change. “We’ll see a lot of scrimmaging out there, but it’s a chance for us to get better. It’s a chance for us to take a next step. A chance for us to evaluate, as well. And so try to really get down to the bare bones of playing some football.”

The frenetic pace made it hard to judge what was going on, but the Tide made some impressive plays. Germie Bernard looked like a No. 1 receiver, Jam Miller won MVP and the defense couldn’t climb out of a hole it dug early.

The scoring system seemed to favor the offense, especially with the defense unable to force any turnovers that weren’t ruled out of bounds or nullified by penalty.

Linebacker Deontae Lawson tried to hold himself back after the game, before heading off to eat his share of the losers’ franks and beans, a tradition that wasn’t going anywhere.

“I think it’s fair,” Lawson started. “Because, like, as a defense you want to create turnovers and as an offense you don’t want to turn the ball over so. (pause) Nah, it’s not fair.”

The redshirt junior could laugh it off. He and the rest of the Tide won’t return to Bryant-Denny Stadium, at least with fans in the stands, until Aug. 31, when the DeBoer era begins in earnest against Western Kentucky.

Hours after the scrimmage, it once again felt like a normal gameday in Tuscaloosa, as teardown continued on the tents near the stadium. Music rang from the strip and students marched that way, following the call of cheap liquor and questionable choices.

At 8:11 p.m., it was dark. Someone besides Nick Saban had led Alabama into Bryant-Denny Stadium, and the regular cycles of the planet continued nonetheless.

Perhaps next time it won’t be so strange. They’ll probably even get the music right.