Steve Spurrier dubbed the early summer months as ‘Talkin’ Season’ many years ago.
That moniker was on full display Monday when new Florida State quarterback Thomas Castellanos sat down with On3’s Pete Nakos for a wide-ranging interview.
“I’m excited, man,” he told Nakos. “People, I don’t know if they know, but you go back and watch every first game that I played in, we always start fast. I dreamed of moments like this. I dreamed of playing against Alabama. They don’t have Nick Saban to save them. I just don’t see them stopping me.”
Castellanos certainly isn’t lacking for confidence, and perhaps the familiar setting for the FSU-Alabama season opener has something to do with that.
The former Boston College signal caller celebrated Week 1 last year at Doak Campbell Stadium by leading the Eagles to a 28-13 win at FSU as 16.5-point road underdogs. Bettors taking BC on the money line cashed lucrative tickets in the +525 neighborhood.
Castellanos put Bill O’Brien’s team into the lead on the first play of the second quarter with a four-yard touchdown run. On BC’s next possession, Castellanos connected with former Seminole running back Treshaun Ward on a 13-yard TD pass.
FSU cut the deficit to 14-6 at halftime, but Castellanos found RB Kye Robichaux for a four-yard TD pass early in the third quarter. Castellanos ended up with 73 rushing yards and one TD on 14 attempts, and he completed 10-of-16 throws for 106 yards and two TDs without an interception.
Castellanos is planning on sparking another upset in Tallahassee to start the 2025 season, too. As of early Tuesday afternoon, most betting shops had Alabama installed as a 12.5-point road favorite at FSU.
One year after going undefeated in the regular season and winning the ACC Championship Game, FSU had one of its worst seasons in program history in 2024. Even after an open date following the loss to Boston College, Mike Norvell’s team lost a 20-12 decision vs. Memphis as a seven-point home favorite.
The loss to Norvell’s old team dropped FSU to 0-3 since it had also lost to Ga. Tech in Week Zero. The Seminoles were fortunate to stop the bleeding in a 14-9 win over California, as the Golden Bears had 23-17 and 410-284 advantages in first downs and total yards, respectively.
But FSU hasn’t beaten an FBS opponent since that win over Justin Wilcox’s squad on Sept. 21. The ‘Noles lost their next six games, including five defeats by margins of 16 points or more, before beating Charleston Southern, an FCS foe, by a 41-7 score in Week 13.
Florida came into Tallahassee in the regular-season finale and captured a 31-11 win as a 16.5-point road favorite. The ‘Noles finished the nightmare campaign with a 2-10 straight-up record and a 3-8-1 against-the-spread mark.
Norvell might already be gone if he hadn’t signed a monster contract extension after going 13-1 in 2023. Three of his five FSU teams have started the season with 0-2 records, and his squads have started 0-3 twice.
After averaging a pedestrian 15.4 points per game last season, the hope is that Gus Malzahn can turn the offense around quickly. Malzahn left his head-coaching job at Central Florida to become FSU’s offensive coordinator.
Castellanos, a native of Waycross, GA., about a three-hour drive North from Tallahassee, had started his career with Malzahn at UCF before transferring to BC. The chance to reunite with his former coach made FSU an easy pick for the dual-threat QB.
“First off, Florida State’s been the school I’ve always wanted to go to,” Castellanos said. “It’s my dream school. I just feel like it’s right. I remember the last time I went to a 2-10 team and had a successful season. I wanted that challenge to come over here and turn this thing around and get it back to where it needed to be. And plus, I feel like I had a pretty good season or two seasons there at BC. I feel like if I did what I did over there, over here, then I’ll be way bigger. It will mean a lot more at Florida State.”
BC actually went 3-9 in 2022, but Castellanos is correct in that he sparked Jeff Hafley’s last team in Chestnut Hill to a surprising turnaround. In fact, he nearly ruined FSU’s perfect regular-season record in 2023.
FSU appeared to be in cruise control after 28 unanswered points gave it a 31-10 lead in the third quarter at BC, but the Eagles countered with a one-yard TD run by Robichaux. The key to the drive was a third-and-17 play when Castellanos hit Dino Tomlin for a 52-yard gain. Unfortunately for the Eagles, their PAT failed, and they still trailed by a 31-16 margin.
FSU’s Trey Benson fumbled on the ensuing kickoff, though, and BC recovered at the 26. The Eagles were stuffed on a fourth-and-two play from FSU’s 5 with 13:32 remaining.
That failure halted BC’s momentum temporarily. Five plays later, however, FSU RB Lawrance Toafili coughed up a fumble that BC’s Khari Johnson returned 18 yards for a TD. Trailing 31-22, Hafley opted to go for two, but the conversion attempt failed.
Nevertheless, Castellanos led a nine-play, 95-yard drive that he capped with a seven-yard TD run to cut FSU’s lead to 31-29 with 5:19 remaining. After BC forced a three and out, it took over at its own 22 with 4:00 left.
Then on a third-and-20 play after Castellanos was sacked, he found Ryan O’Keefe for a 28-yard pass. But a pair of incompletions and a sack forced BC to punt.
BC appeared poised to get another chance with a minute left on the clock when it had Toafili stopped short of a first down in a third-and-seven situation. But the Eagles were called for a facemask – their 18th penalty of the day to set a program record – at the end of the play, and FSU was able to run out the clock.
Castellanos had completed 20-of-33 passes for 305 yards and one TD with one interception. He had 95 rushing yards and one TD on 16 attempts.
With Hafley on the hot seat after a 1-3 start to the 2023 campaign, Castellanos led BC on a five-game winning streak, with four of those victories coming in one-possession games. He produced 156 rushing yards and two TDs in a 23-14 win over SMU as a 13-point underdog in the Fenway Bowl.
Several weeks later, Hafley resigned and went back to the NFL to become defensive coordinator for the Green Bay Packers. BC hired O’Brien, the former Penn St. HC who also was the HC for the Houston Texans before spending time as OC on Saban’s staff at Alabama.
BC started 4-1 on O’Brien’s watch last year with the lone defeat coming in a 27-21 loss at eighth-ranked Missouri as a 14.5-point road underdog. With Castellanos out injured in Week 5, the Eagles rallied for a 21-20 comeback win over Western Kentucky.
Going into a Week 6 showdown at Virginia, Castellanos had a 10/2 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Those stats improved to 12/2 when he threw a pair of TD passes in the first half to give BC a 14-0 lead.
But the game – and the O’Brien/Castellanos relationship – took a turn for the worse in the second half. Castellanos committed three turnovers, one of which was a fumble that UVA returned 40 yards for a TD to take a 17-14 lead, as the Cavaliers outscored BC 18-0 in the fourth quarter to collect a 24-14 comeback win.
Castellanos was benched three weeks later after a slow start vs. Syracuse. He entered the portal several days later.
In 2023, Castellanos was given freedom to improvise and use his athleticism. He thrived by using his legs to rush for 1,113 yards and 13 TDs with a 5.2 yards-per-carry average. Those numbers made up for Castellanos’s mediocre 15/14 TD-INT ratio.
O’Brien wanted Castellanos to stay in the pocket more. It worked for the most part, as his passer rating from 2023 (121.0) improved to 163.4 in O’Brien’s offense. Castellanos also improved his completion percentage from 57.3 to 61.5, and he had an 18/5 TD-INT ration last season.
But Castellanos was only able to produce 194 rushing yards and one TD on 93 attempts (2.1 YPC). In Malzahn’s offense, he’ll be able to get back to making plays with his legs, much like QBs such as Cam Newton, Nick Marshall and John Rhys Plumlee have done in the past.
“He’s just giving me the keys and allowing me to just be me,” Castellanos said. “Just go out there and play football within the offense. That’s what I need. I don’t need a dog collar or a leash on me. I just need coach to say, ‘Just go be you. Go play.’ That’s what I was missing.”
It would be a massive understatement to call this is a crucial season for Norvell and his staff. In hopes of improving his job security at FSU, he brought in the nation’s #18 overall recruiting class and the sixth-ranked group of transfer-specific imports, according to the 247Sports Composite.
There are 23 incoming players from the portal, including 19 from Power-Four programs and eight four-star transfers. Four of those eight are on the offensive side of the ball with Castellanos, including WR Squirrel White (Tennessee), center Luke Petibon (Wake Forest), OT Micah Pettus (Ole Miss) and WR Duce Robinson (USC).
Coming out of spring practice, there were eight senior transfers set to be starters and essentially serve as one-year rentals. In addition to Castellanos, White, Pettus and Petibon, there’s OT Gunnar Hansen (Vanderbilt), CB Jeremiah Wilson (Houston), MLB Elijah Herring (Memphis) and DE Deamontae Diggs (Coastal Carolina).
This is their last chance to improve their stock for the next level. And even though Norvell’s buyout remains enormous, he’d better have at least eight wins in his pocket ahead of his team’s regular-season finale at The Swamp if he wants to enjoy his lunch on Thanksgiving Day.
“Just how desperate they were, and the same way for me,” Castellanos said. “If this doesn’t go right, then who knows? But I just liked how desperate they were. They could have gone out and gotten any quarterback in the country with NIL, and they chose me. Just excited to be where I wanted to be from the get-go. He [Norvell] believed in me to be his quarterback and to be back with Gus.
“This could be it, right here. All they need is one season and one year. I feel like I have the skill set to be one of the best. Now I just have to turn this thing around for these guys, for this community, this fan base and the staff. I’m not just playing for Florida State. I’m playing for coaches who are fathers and who have homes and families here. I’m trying to save jobs and win.”
In this year of desperation for the 2025 ‘Noles, FanDuel has their season win total set at 7.5 (‘under’ -215, ‘over’ +172). They have 30/1 odds to win the ACC Championship Game.
**B.E.’s Bonus Nuggets**
-Phil Steele’s National Unit Rankings have FSU #43 at QB, #34 at RB, #22 at WR, #28 on the OL, #25 on the DL, #34 at LB, #29 at DB and #72 on special teams.
-Steele’s preseason magazine has Castellanos ranked as the #62 QB available for the 2026 NFL Draft. FanDuel has Castellanos listed with 120/1 odds to win the Heisman Trophy. White is also on the board at 500/1.
-FanDuel’s Games of the Year lines were just released. The betting shop has FSU as a 7.5-point home underdog (-105 price) vs. Miami and a 16.5-point road underdog (-105 price) at Clemson. The ‘Noles are +230 on the money line vs. the Hurricanes and +520 to win outright at Clemson.
-DraftKings has FSU as a 10.5-point road underdog at Florida.
-FSU is 1-4 in the all-time rivalry vs. Alabama. The Seminoles won a 21-14 decision over the Crimson Tide as two-point favorites in Jacksonville during Saban’s first year at the helm in 2007. This is the Tide’s first-ever trip to Doak Campbell. They last met in Atlanta for the 2017 season opener when Alabama beat FSU 24-7 and knocked its starting QB Deondre Francois out for the season with a knee injury. As a redshirt freshman in 2016, Francois had led FSU to a 10-3 record by throwing for 3,350 yards with a 20/7 TD-INT ratio and five rushing TDs. His career was never the same and ended in 2019 playing for the Hampton Pirates at the FCS level.
-Norvell owns a 6-3 SU record and a 4-5 ATS mark in nine career season openers as a HC.
-Steele’s mag has first, second, third and fourth teams for its all-conference units. Robinson and Pettus are FSU’s only honorees on the offensive side of the ball as All-ACC second and fourth teamers, respectively. DT Darrell Jackson is a preseason second-team All-ACC pick and Wilson is a third teamer at CB. Samuel Singleton is a second-team All-ACC choice at kick returner, while Mason Arnold is a fourth teamer at long snapper.