Thomas Castellanos tried to tell us this upset of Alabama was coming
By David Wasson
Published:
Tommy Castellanos tried to tell everyone.
Castellanos tried to tell us that the Florida State Seminoles, rightly maligned as one of the more dreadful Power 4 teams in the country last season, were going to cause Alabama all sorts of woe Saturday afternoon. Castellanos tried to tell us that Nick Saban wasn’t around to save the Crimson Tide anymore.
Tommy Castellanos tried to tell everyone. We just didn’t listen.
And how could we have known, really? All Castellanos was known for before Saturday was losing his job and quitting on Boston College last season, and then for popping off about the Tide during the summer as he was still becoming acquainted with his new Seminole teammates.
As it turns out, Castellanos was not only prescient with his mouth but priming to be plenty precocious in the face of an Alabama defense that wanted to make him eat his words. Talk may be cheap, but when you can back it up? Arms waving and mouth moving all Saturday afternoon and into the evening, Touchdown Tommy flipped the script not only on the Florida State narrative but the Alabama rhetoric as well.
The Seminole student body barely began celebrating on the newly installed Doak Campbell Stadium turf when Castellanos started his well-earned talking about the 31-17 victory.
“It’s a blessing,” Castellanos told ABC as fans surrounded him in jubilation. “Thankful to be here. Thankful for the opportunity. Thank God and thank coach [Mike] Norvell the opportunity to let me be here and choosing me. They could’ve chosen a lot of guys out of the portal. They chose me. They believed in me. I’m just thankful to be here.”
Deep in the bowels of the stadium at the same time, Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer bemoaned his team’s ability to defend Castellanos and Co. from sideline to sideline in a loss that ended the Crimson Tide’s streak of 23-straight wins in season openers.
“You get 1-on-1, you get in space, and you’ve got to find a way to get them on the ground,” DeBoer said. “You’ve got to use your leverage and you’ve got to find ways to trust your buddies around you, that they’re in pursuit.”
Alabama’s continued inability to come up with answers to the questions that Castellanos and the Seminoles offense were asking flew directly in the face of the preseason narrative surrounding the Tide. Specifically, this Tide defense was supposed to be way more stout than the generally toothless bunch that coordinator Kane Wommack rolled out at Doak Campbell Stadium.
Yes, losing defensive tackle Tim Keenan III to a game-week ankle injury at practice didn’t help. But Keenan likely wasn’t going to be chasing Castellanos around anyway. And with the dual-threat quarterback keeping Alabama honest all over the field, he was able to pick apart the Tide with his arm and his legs.
The Bully Ball was complete, and it was masterful – as Florida State rolled up 230 rushing yards and averaged 4.7 yards per carry. In contrast, the Seminoles averaged just 89.9 rushing yards per game last season.
“I choose to believe we’ve got a good football team, but we can’t play on our heels,” said DeBoer, who fell to 6-4 against unranked teams at Alabama. “We’re not going to be what we think we can be, what we want to be, if that’s the case. That falls on everyone.”
Even the most hardened of pundits figured the No. 8 team in the country was going to be significantly better than reality – and that talent chasm falls squarely at the feet of DeBoer. Because Vanderbilt and Oklahoma engineering home upsets of Alabama is one thing, but when a 2-10 program looks better in every facet of the game… it starts feeling and looking much more like a trend.
The seemingly bigger and badder Crimson Tide were both a step behind and pushed around at pivotal moments by the Seminoles – a program that went from undefeated ACC champions to national laughingstock within a season. Major credit has to go to Norvell, who lured Gus Malzahn away from the big headset at Central Florida to direct his offense in 2025.
Although a similar reversal of fortune remains unlikely at Alabama, Saturday’s outcome mirrored the same eerie start to Florida State’s 2024 – which saw the Noles pushed around by Georgia Tech in Ireland then for pretty much the entirety of the season both at home and on the road.
Will that continue for Alabama in the same fashion? Likely no, as Louisiana-Monroe beckons next week at home. But if the Tide aren’t careful against either the Warhawks or the following week against Wisconsin at Bryant-Denny Stadium, the Sept. 27 road trip to play Georgia could well spell disaster.
“There’s no excuse about what happened,” DeBoer said. “We stepped on the football field, they stepped on the football field, and we’ve got to play ball. We’ve got to play our style of ball. Last year isn’t this year.”
And Castellanos? His 16 carries were a team high, as no teammate had more than 7, for 78 yards on the ground. Couple that with 154 air yards, and Castellanos’ game undoubtedly cashed the check his mouth wrote during the summer. It was a masterful performance that not only stunned the No. 8 team in the nation, but infused fresh hope into the Seminoles faithful that partied deep into the night.
Tommy Castellanos tried to tell everyone. We really should have listened.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. He also hosts Gulfshore Sports with David Wasson, weekdays from 3-5 pm across Southwest Florida and on FoxSportsFM.com. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
