Not a dumb question at all.
The BIOS is really a program used to service the hardware.
A EC, embedded controller is a bit of hardware that does specific operations on an external device.
Example: PC. Upon power up, the BIOS program looks for the floppy drive by asking the controller to return the head ton the home position. The on-board controller itself monitors the limit switch and when it indicates the head is at home, it raises a flag that is read by the BIOS.
In the above you have BIOS working with an embedded controller.
It is possible to control a floppy drive, or even a hard drive, without a controller. But that is only done with minimal machine were low-cost is more important that performance. An example is the Apple ][ with had no floppy controller.