‘A better player and a better man’: Broken leg rehab remade Eastern Michigan’s Dontae McMillan for the better

Ypsilanti — It’s the end of practice No. 17 in Eastern Michigan’s fall camp, a focused few hours on the grey Rynearson Stadium turf on a cool, cloudy Wednesday evening. 

Head coach Chris Creighton brings the team together and midfield, delivering some end-of-practice analysis and giving the floor to general manager Jeff Collett for some off-field scheduling reminders. And amongst the Eagles kneeling at midfield is someone who, in a lot of ways, isn’t supposed to be there. 

But in this moment, Dontae McMillan was laser focused on what stood in front of him, and not the prior 11 and a half months that posed some of the biggest challenges of his life. 

A graduate student entering his seventh year in college football, a journey that started at FCS Weber State in 2019, McMillan was supposed to have wrapped up his college playing career at the end of 2024. But a season-ending injury in Week 2 before a hometown crowd, in front of countless family and friends in attendance, added an abrupt, late detour in McMillan’s route through college and to, ideally, the NFL. It tested McMillan in new ways, mentally and physically, and he powered through a long and often lonely rehab process. 

“So when that happened, it was really new to me,” McMillan said. “Like, actually it was a new experience for me.”

And for as much as last year challenged McMillan, taxing his mental resolve as he stacked incremental rehab wins, the lessons he’s learned and hurdles he’s cleared will only serve him in the long run. 

“The world, you know, comes to an end really,” Creighton said about experiencing a season-ending injury. “And then at some point, if you handle it right, it can become a blessing. It's sick to say, but it's like, you're almost glad that it happened. Because I mean, he's healthy and he's a year older and he's, you know what I mean? 

“I think he's gonna run, angry is not the right word, but it's kind of gonna feel like that.”

Sweet homecoming turns sour

Sept. 7, 2024, was maybe the biggest single game of McMillan’s career, personally. So sitting in the injury tent on the visiting sidelines of Washington’s Husky Stadium, he wasn’t seeing silver linings that his coach waxed poetic about nearly a year later. 

A Seattle native, McMillan got his first chance to play college football in his hometown, as the Eagles visited the Huskies for a non-conference game in Week 2. Countless members of his family and friends were on hand to watch him play. 

McMillan was naturally juiced up for the day. 

And his early play on the field showed it, and Candice Sweet-Deakings, his godmother and a de facto mother figure in his life, could see it from the stands. 

“He started off that game and was just, ah, dropping shoulders and running everybody over and picking up yards,” Sweet-Deakings said. “The whole crowd was just ecstatic. It was full of so much excitement.”

On his eighth carry, shortly before halftime, McMillan got tackled and didn’t immediately get up. 

That gave Sweet-Deakings pause. McMillan always got up from injuries. And he’d never been seriously hurt before.  

As McMillan stayed down, she knew it had to be serious. 

“He’s always been able to bounce up and shake it off,” Sweet-Deakings said. “And he couldn’t.”

On the field, McMillan wanted to get up, but he couldn’t. His leg just didn’t work, and he knew something was seriously wrong. 

An injury timeout was called and trainers and coaches came out to attend to McMillan. As he hobbled off the field, leaning on two bodies to keep weight off his now-injured leg, Sweet-Deakings knew it was something significant. Still, she hoped it might not be severe. 

McMillan shuffled into the injury tent and got a closer look from trainers and doctors and quickly the prognosis came back, and it wasn’t good: His leg was probably broken near the ankle. They needed to take X-rays to see how badly, but it could be a season-ending injury. 

They hoped it could be a fracture, something he could come back from in a matter of weeks or maybe a month.

But as McMillan emerged from the tent, he made eye contact with Sweet-Deakings in the stands, and he communicated to her that a nightmare was materializing. 

“I was just chilling on the bench for a little bit and then the trainer came and got me,” McMillan said. “And so I couldn't even, it was hard for me to walk. And it was very frustrating for me. And so we went under the tent, they checked my leg out and I just told him, ‘It's, it's not right.’”

In coming hours and days, further X-rays and scans confirmed what the medical staff initially feared: McMillan had broken his right fibula and would need surgery to repair it. He’d be out for the season. 

After returning to southeast Michigan, McMillan went under the knife for a surgery that repaired not only his broken leg, but addressed the damage to ligaments and connective tissue in his ankle that had been worn down and then partially destroyed by the injury, Sweet-Deakings said. 

But before leaving Husky Stadium, McMillan faced his family and friends, wheelchair bound, and the enormity of what lay ahead set in. 

"I remember just after the game, I was in the wheelchair. I didn't like that,” McMillan said. “I didn't like my family seeing me like that. And I was just tearing down and I was just looking at everybody and I was just trying to be strong. But they can tell in my face that I was really actually in pain.”

He didn’t express to them at the time, but Sweet-Deakings knew that McMillan felt like he’d let everyone down. 

“In Dontae’s mind, he’s like, ‘I let you guys down,’” Sweet-Deakings said. “And it’s like, no, there’s no way you let us down. You went out there and performed your best. We just want you healthy.”

Mental tests of rehab

McMillan had never been seriously injured prior to breaking his leg. So in the days following his surgery, a new opponent came into focus: His own mind. 

Along with carrying feelings of letting his team down, McMillan grappled with a harsh new reality that his NFL dreams were on hold and instead of playing football for the foreseeable future, he had weeks and months of injury rehab stretching out before him. 

“It was really a me versus me situation, in my head, mentally,” McMillan said. “And so, yeah, man, that was like the hardest days of my life.”

It’d have been easy to stew in those feelings, too, especially right after the surgery, before McMillan could take on intensive physical work to rehab. His post-op assignment was to rest and let the incisions heal and the swelling go down. That meant lots of time sequestered in his apartment in the first few weeks post-op. 

He couldn’t even walk on it fully, and even things as simple as needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night became a distinct challenge.

“I had a scooter around the house,” McMillan said. “You know, crutches. But I didn't like the crutches. I like the scooters, but that's what it really was for me. It was very difficult.”

But McMillan didn’t let the darkness absorb him, nor would his support network let it. He had some family come to stay with him to help out as he was relatively immobile. Sweet-Deakings, who couldn’t get away from the West Coast, footed the bill for a grocery order to make sure McMillan had his fridge and pantry stocked with good food. They’d call almost daily, too.

His teammates supported him, too. 

McMillan credited all of his teammates for the love they showed him to lift him up after his surgery, but particularly noted how he leaned on wide receiver Terry Lockett Jr. to help him when the doubts and angst started to get too loud in his head. 

“We both came in here at the same time,” McMillan said. “And I just really wanna thank him for just really being there for me, you know, as a brother and just putting me as his family.”

And somewhere in all this, McMillan accepted something important: He didn’t let anyone down when he went down that day in Seattle. 

And he didn’t need to hold on to any ill-will pointed at himself for getting hurt when he did. 

“I'm never gonna forget that moment because it made me a better — a better player and a better man after that, you know?” McMillan said.

After the season concluded, McMillan went home to Seattle for the winter break. 

Between a needed few weeks of rest and relaxation away from the day-to-day demands of being a college athlete — he still kept on his rehab intensely, Sweet-Deakings said — and being at a point where his rehab involved physical work, Sweet-Deakings saw how McMillan had turned a corner, at least mentally. 

But there was still physical gains to be made. 

The massive post-op swelling had long subsided and showed just how much muscle had atrophied as McMillan’s leg was out of commission. Along with needing to add muscle mass and strength to the lower leg itself, McMillan needed to rebuild the strength and mobility in his ankle, which had been stabilized in a boot for the better part of three months. 

He could move around without any aids. But he was still slow and steady going up and down stairs, some three-plus months removed from surgery. And with incision scars and little exposure to the elements, it didn’t look great, either. 

“It was discolored,” Sweet-Deakings said. “It was like, ‘Dang, he needed some sun.’”

As McMillan wrapped up his junket home and returned to Ypsilanti for the spring 2025 semester, something had become clear: For all the physical work that lie ahead, McMillan had turned a corner in his mind. 

‘Another last chance’

One lesson McMillan had to internalize going into this season: His leg will never be the same. 

Not necessarily worse, but never like it was before he broke it. That’s the price of having added hardware. 

And what matters most is that McMillan is confident in his leg, not just to hold up, health-wise, but to help him be the sort of running back that can lead a Division 1 backfield. 

The revelation came when McMillan noticed that he was practicing relatively pain free.

He was back.

“My ankle had to get acclimated to it, so it took a while, but I just felt like once it was barely hurting, I said, ‘Oh yeah, I'm ready for this year. It's my year,’” McMillan said.

And with the 2025 season on the doorstep, the same coaches and players that McMillan felt he let down almost a year ago rave about how thankful they are to have him on this team. 

“It was supposed to be his last year, last year,” Creighton said. “With his injury there at Washington, he’s got another last chance and he’s playing like it, as well.”

Sweet-Deakings and his family are, of course, behind him, too. Though now, there’s an increased awareness of just how thin the margin is between McMillan living out his dreams or falling short, and that it might not ultimately be up to him. 

But they also learned, and McMillan learned, too, just how resilient and relentless he can be, even when the deck stacked up against him. 

“He’s the most determined person I’ve ever met in my life,” Sweet-Deakings said.

So, McMillan might not have been supposed to be part of this Eastern Michigan team, originally. But it’s no surprise to anyone that he’s still here.