How Alabama plans to contain Thomas Castellanos: 'We want to make sure he doesn’t want the ball'

Alabama football’s defense is ready to do what it takes to contain Florida State’s starting quarterback Thomas Castellanos Saturday to open the 2025 football season.

Castellanos is a dual-threat quarterback, who transferred to the Seminoles after playing a year at UCF and two years at Boston College.

The signal caller has thrown for 3,689 yards and 19 touchdowns in his college career. He has also added 1,427 rushing yards and 15 rushing touchdowns. This proven production forces the Tide to respect his dual-threat ability.

“He’s hard to get down,” Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack told reporters on Monday. “He’s a very shifty player. He can run, he’s elusive in the pocket. … We’ll have our work cut out for us. It’ll be as challenging as we’ve had as far as creating negative plays on the quarterback.”

The Tide’s defensive lineman, LT Overton is looking forward to the challenge and wants the Florida State quarterback to feel uneasy throughout the game.

“We played a shifty, mobile quarterback every day in practice last year,” Overton said. “So, it’s nothing different, just being able to keep them contained, keeping our rush lanes and stay in check and making sure, he just keeps the ball like we want to make sure he doesn’t want the ball in his hands anymore.”

Castellanos can put pressure on all three levels of the Crimson Tide’s defense if he gets out in space and becomes a threat to run and pass. Alabama’s safety, Bray Hubbard feels this is why the Tide’s defense must play with disciplined eyes on Saturday.

“Honestly, it’s just being disciplined with your eyes,” Hubbard told reporters. “Your eyes are gonna take you everywhere. So, focusing in on our keys that we got to see to help stop them. When you have a running quarterback, like Florida State have, like Vanderbilt and Oklahoma and all them, you have to stay disciplined with your eyes. That’s where that’s where you get messed up, even at the linebacker position too, with D Law (Deontae Lawson) and all them. We all have to be disciplined with our eyes when we playing in the box .”

The Crimson Tide and Florida State go to battle Saturday in Tallahassee. Kick off is set for 2:30 p.m. CST.