Delaware State fires its football coach, a former NFL star player

As head coach, Rod Milstead could not help Delaware State win football games the way he did as a player.

As a result, the long and difficult task of turning the Hornets into winners again will now fall to someone else.

Milstead, 53, was dismissed as DSU coach Monday, athletic director Alecia Shields-Gadson said in a school announcement.

In his five years at the helm, Milstead's teams went 17-33 overall and 7-18 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.

The move came nine days after the Hornets completed a 5-6 season with a 34-7 loss to Campbell. They fell 37-7 the week before to league rival Morgan State.

It was their 10th straight season under .500. DSU was 2-3 in MEAC games.

"I'm disappointed," said Milstead, who'd hoped to finish out a contract that runs through the 2023 season. "But I'm not mad, I'm not angry, none of that. I love Delaware State. Always have, always will. And I'm still gonna support whenever I can."

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The team's 5-6 records the last two years did equal the best since also going 5-6 in 2013.

"That's why today was shocking to me," Milstead said. "I think that we're on the right page."

But Milstead had been hired to restore previous glory on the Dover campus. He had been an All-American offensive lineman and four-year starter from 1988 to 1991 on DelState teams that went 38-14 overall and 18-6 in the MEAC under former coach Bill Collick.

Milstead went on to play 56 games in the NFL with San Francisco, where he won a Super Bowl, and Washington through 2000.

Milstead had spent just two seasons coaching college football before being hired as DSU head coach. He was offensive line coach at MEAC rival North Carolina Central in 2013 and Delaware State under coach Kermit Blount in 2014. He had coached 11 seasons of high school football, including at head coach at La Plata (Maryland) from 2015-17.

The 2022 Delaware State season was rocked by the sudden illness and death of offensive coordinator Bryan Bossard on Oct. 17. The Dover High grad and former University of Delaware player and assistant coach was 55 and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September.

Injuries to some key players had also plagued the 2022 team.

"I understand the business," Milstead said. "When you're 17-33, regardless of what adversity you've gone through, there's a certain expectation that people want."

“We thank coach Milstead for his service to our football program and the university the past five years and wish him well in his future endeavors,” Shields-Gadson said in the school statement. “The university will soon begin a national search for a new head football coach.”

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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware State fires football coach, former NFL player Rod Milstead