National Football League

Ex-Charger: '94 team 'might be cursed'

Published May. 4, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Reuben Davis, the defensive tackle for the 1994 San Diego Chargers, said he feared "we might be cursed" after Junior Seau became the eighth member of the AFC Championship winning team to die.

Seau's shocking suicide Wednesday continued a tragic trend among the lineup, dating back to linebacker David Grigg's fatal car wreck in 1995, a few months after the team's Super Bowl loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Running back Rodney Culver died a year later in a ValuJet airplane crash in Florida, before linebacker Doug Miller was struck twice by lightning during a camping trip in Colorado in 1998.

A decade passed before center Curtis Whitley died of an apparently accidental drug overdose in 2008, the same year that defensive end Chris Mims succumbed to an enlarged heart.

Defensive lineman Shawn Lee and linebacker Lew Bush both died last year from heart attacks, before Seau took his own life with a gunshot wound to the chest. All of the players died before reaching 45.

"It's kind of like a 'Final Destination' movie," Davis told TMZ. "I feel we might be cursed, and it's scary."

After the 17-13 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship Game, the 1994 Chargers lost 49-26 to the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX.

"Ever since [the win over Pittsburgh], it has been downhill," Davis said. "At the end, we didn't win the Super Bowl and now this. It's just scary, and I have no answer."

Center Courtney Hall first entertained the idea of a "curse" four years ago when Mims became the fifth team member to die, but he said Seau's suicide left him unable to explain events.

"I'm still kind of processing everything right now," Hall told Yahoo Sports. "I had more to say back [in 2008] than I do now. I really am at a loss for words."

Hall, though, said the surviving members of the team pledged to be more involved in each other's lives as they exchanged calls in the wake of Seau's death.

"In general, we talked about getting together and reaching out to one another," he said. "The thing I related to everybody is that we are a brotherhood. ... We developed bonds and dealt with the same issues and the same ups and downs. For me, I've gotten to the point where I wish we as a group of elite athletes are able to reach out to each other more and are able to talk about what's going on in our lives."

Davis echoed the call for the retired players to stick together.

"Every year, the Chargers have an alumni weekend," he said. "Maybe we need to reach out to the remaining players and all agree to get together as a group. It's just scary."