Danny Rocco is a good football person. In college, he played for Joe Paterno at Penn State and was a captain for Al Groh at Wake Forest. He’s been on the coaching staff of nearly a dozen teams since the mid-1980s, from Boston College to the Texas Longhorns to the New York Jets. He has never posted a losing record since becoming a head coach in 2006. He led massive turnarounds for moribund programs—three times. And this afternoon, he could become the first person to lose to Stony Brook with three different teams.
From 2006 to 2011, Rocco was the head coach at Liberty University, Stony Brook’s longtime nemesis during their tenure in the Big South Conference. Under Rocco’s direction, the Flames went from a 1–10 team the year before Rocco arrived to an annual contender for the conference title. From 2006 to 2009, Rocco’s Flames rattled off 15 straight conference wins, a Big South record that still stands today.
Liberty went for their 16th in a row—and a third consecutive Big South championship—on November 21, 2007 at a half-empty LaValle Stadium, against a .500 Stony Brook team in just its second year in the conference. A last-second touchdown from Michael Coulter to Jordan Gush snapped Liberty’s winning streak, and gave the Seawolves a 36–33 win and their first of four straight Big South conference championships.
Stony Brook and Liberty would continue to battle for the conference title until the Seawolves departed for the CAA, with both programs trading wins at home. Rocco lost at LaValle Stadium again in 2011, this time by 10 in a game that sent the Seawolves to their first-ever FCS playoffs.
Following the season, Rocco accepted a job offer from Richmond, which was coming off of a disappointing 3–8 campaign in 2011. As he did with Liberty, Rocco quickly righted the ship in 2012, going 8–3 his first season and returning the Spiders to the top of the CAA standings. When Stony Brook joined the conference a year later, the Seawolves hosted Richmond in early November and played them closer than expected. The next time they met was last season, when Rocco’s Spiders were ranked #2 in the country. Stony Brook thrashed them 42–14.
Rocco’s shaky history at LaValle Stadium wasn’t lost on him, either. “I’ve played Stony Brook for a number of years,” he said on Monday during the weekly CAA coaches teleconference. “You always get a physical group, you always get a well-coached group, you always get a defense that’s aggressive, that runs well, that is disruptive.”
On Saturday, Rocco will make his return to LaValle Stadium at the helm of his third team in six years in the Delaware Blue Hens. It’s still relatively early in the season, but already UD looks to be an improved team from the one that Stony Brook dominated 28–3 in Newark last season.
Though their 2–2 record may not fully reflect it, the Hens have played well this season. Most recently, they pushed the defending national champions for a full four quarters in Week 5 before falling to James Madison at home 20–10. Like Stony Brook, Delaware relies heavily on the running game, averaging over 174 yards per game on the ground. And like Stony Brook, their defense has been stingy so far this season, ranking just behind the Seawolves in total defense.
Where Delaware has struggled is under center. Junior Quarterback Joe Walker has been the Hens’ starter for almost every game since 2015, but he was lifted late in the fourth quarter against JMU in favor of J.P. Caruso. Both are expected to see playing time on Saturday.
