It is not unheard of for a team to face a quarterback multiple times throughout that player's college career, but in the modern era of college football that can happen in a different manner. Such is the case of Alabama
's opponent this week in Florida State starting quarterback Ashton Daniels, who was a part-time starter last season at Auburn and started in the 2025 Iron Bowl, which Alabama won 27-20 in a thriller.While there is a lot more to this matchup than just the Alabama defense vs. Daniels, this article will focus on the matchup with the now Florida State signal caller in last year's Iron Bowl. And also, obviously some things from the Daniels end will be different this time around since he's on a new team and in a new offense.
Just looking
at the numbers of Daniels' performance last year, he had success against the Tide on the ground with 108 rushing yards. He was sacked one time, which was on Auburn's first drive of the game. Daniels accounted for over 70% of Auburn's rushing yards in the Iron Bowl. In the passing game, Daniels completed just 46% of his passes (18/39 passing, although the Auburn receivers didn't help him out with several drops) for 259 yards with one touchdown and one interception. If it were not for the costly drops, he would have passed for over 300 yards.
For the most part in the passing game, Daniels worked almost exclusively underneath in the 2025 Iron Bowl. Most of his completions were caught within five yards of the line of scrimmage. Even Daniels' longest completion of the night, a 66-yarder that set-up Auburn inside the 10 early in the 4th quarter, was a hitch route that was caught just five yards beyond the line of scrimmage that was sprung for the long gain off a missed tackle.
However, he did have some success down the field through the air when scrambling, which included a 64-yard touchdown pass that was caught 25 yards down the field. On said play, Daniels scrambled to the right, which forced the defender in the flats to have his eyes in the backfield and allowed Malcolm Simmons behind him. Then a poor angle on an attempt to jump the pass gave Auburn the long touchdown.
A lot of Daniels' runs last year were just consistent four-to-five yard gains. Plus he had a couple runs in the 8-to-10 yard range. His longest run of the game was a 20-yard scramble on fourth down in which he made an Alabama defender miss on a diving tackle attempt at the line of scrimmage and he was able to get to the sideline and scamper for the first down.
Daniels' runs were a good mix of designed quarterback runs (a lot of QB counters) and scrambles. I'd expect that trend to continue in this game. In general, I'd expect Daniels to be active in the run game. Through FSU's first two games this season, Daniels has run the ball 24 times and has scored two rushing touchdowns.
Auburn also used a good bit of RPO's in the 2025 Iron Bowl, which is also something I would expect Florida State to use as well.
How can Alabama defense limit Florida State quarterback Ashton Daniels
Alabama will have to be disciplined in their pass-rush lanes to not open up holes for Daniels to scramble, and when they do bring pressure they will need to get home to keep Daniels from either scrambling into the open field or burning them like he did last year on scramble drill passes. There were several times in the Iron Bowl last year that Alabama's interior pass-rush got too far up the field and it allowed Daniels to step up and scramble up the middle. Or they allowed him to get to the outside.
However, the difficulty for Alabama is that they cannot fully key on Daniels, because Florida State has one of the best running backs in the country in Ousmane Kromah. Alabama linebackers Caleb Woodson and Luke Metz will be keys in this matchup, having to defend Kromah in the traditional run game, while also chasing Daniels sideline-to-sideline. Alabama could also choose to utilize a QB spy, which they did a couple times in last year's Iron Bowl.
How Kane Wommack uses his past experience coaching against Daniels to attempt to contain him, but also not opening up his defense to light numbers against Kromah, will be one of the bigger storylines of the weekend.
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This article originally appeared on Roll Tide Wire: How Alabama defense can limit Ashton Daniels in Week 3 rematch
