This does not look good, since only one of the four has been found.

The story so far.

What ashame. Hopefully they all had their life vests on and have just been taken by the current. I hope this ends with the other three being found alive.

Click on emoticons.

This is such a heartbreaking story. According to the latest reports based on the survivor's (Nick Schuyler) account, the 4 men clung onto the boat for as long as they could. Cooper and Smith took their vests off and drifted away from the boat. Schuyler held on to Bleakley, and he died in his arms. Still holding out hope the families of Cooper and Smith suggested that Schuyler might not be able to give an accurate account owing to what he's been through, but Schuyler's doctor says that his faculties were not impaired.

They were upstanding guys, not yey in the prime of their lives. You never know...live life as if it were your last day!
New York Post article

OMG!

This could hit hard on the Raiders where Cooper was an 8 year veteran. They have a lot of time to let it go but judging from this article, that could become difficult, especially considering the way he died.

What I don't understand is why the two players took off their life jackets, let alone let go of the boat. Perhaps that was the second miscalculation by Cooper, who was obviously an experienced boater, after heading out with that forecast at all.

I just hope those who survive all three of the players lost at sea will be able to move on.

According to doctors and other experts, after being so long in cold water (60 degree H2O in their case) and body temperature dropping, you begin to hallucinate. Apparently this is what happened. Just hope that their families begin to accept it.

When I read the story, the first thing that popped into my mind was that the pain and the waiting was so horrible, they just gave up. I figured they knew the life jacket would keep them floating and alive longer so they discarded them and drown. There also might have been a problem with the boat staying above the surface with all four of them holding on to it. Maybe they sacrificed their lives so their buddies could live.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately if it delays or deters survivors from coming to terms with the event, more information is filtering out about the details of Nick Schuyler's recollections.

It appears that Marquis Cooper, the owner of the boat, likely suffered from a phenomenon called "paradoxical undressing" which occurs in about 50% of cases of hypothermia. I am guessing that Cooper had relatively low body fat, even compared to the others, and this may have increased the intensity of the PU, since his body might have pumped even more blood to the exterior to keep it warmer.

The fact that Bleakley had to use a boat seat rather than a life jacket - they could only recover three for the four of them - may also help explain why he could not hold on as well as Schuyler.

Investigators have announced the likely cause of this tragedy.

Wow! Schuyler will probably never be able to forget such a tragedy. It'll be interesting to see how he moves forward w/ his life. Hope he's able to get to some "normalcy" soon. God knows I'd be a mess for a loooong time. Godspeed to him for sure!