One survivor found, while 2 NFL players, Corey Smith & Marquis Cooper, still lost at sea

One survivor found, while 2 NFL players, Corey Smith & Marquis Cooper are still lost at sea

Two NFL players, Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper (below), are still missing at sea.

A rescued ex-football player said Monday he managed to survive more than 36 harrowing hours lost at sea by thinking about his mother.

"Mom, you're not going to go to my funeral," Nick Schuyler, 24, told his mom moments after being plucked from the capsized fishing boat.

"That's what I kept thinking," he told her, relating his long-odds struggle to survive after 15-foot waves flipped the small boat.

Nick Schuyler was plucked from the crippled boat 35 miles off Florida's Gulf Coast.

There was still no sign of two NFL players and another buddy who set out on the fishing trip Saturday morning.

Schuyler, a former gridder at the University of South Florida, was found clinging to the overturned 21-foot boat and rushed to a Tampa hospital.

Poignant TV footage showed the boat bobbing upside down in open water.

Still missing were National Football League players Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper and Will Bleakley, another former USF gridder, officials said. Sources said Schuyler told family members the others clung to the overturned boat for 12 to 16 hours into Sunday morning before slipping away.

Schuyler told rescuers the other men were swept away from the boat after it capsized Saturday night in 62-degree water.

"He said they were overturned by a wave and all four men were clinging to the boat," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Simpson.

A cousin of Cooper told the St. Petersburg Times that all four men initially managed to cling to the capsized boat, but only Schuyler was able to hold on.

Stu Schuyler, the rescued man's father, said he was holding out hope for the still-missing boaters.

"My heart still goes out to the other guys," he said. "We're praying for them."

Relatives reported the men missing when they failed to return as scheduled Saturday night and weather conditions worsened.

The Coast Guard searched for the boat in a 16,000-square-mile swath of the Gulf of Mexico west of Clearwater Pass.

By Monday, harsh sea and weather conditions were starting to subside. Waves were 6 to 8 feet, still enough for a small craft advisory, but considerably smaller than Sunday's 15-footers, said National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Barron.

Nick Schuyler, a fitness trainer, briefly played football for USF in the fall of 2006.

His dad said his son went fishing with the same group last weekend.

Cooper owns the boat. He and Smith, who were teammates with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004, have been on fishing trips before, said Ron Del Duca, Smith's agent.

Bruce Cooper, a sportscaster in Phoenix, said his son Marquis goes deep-sea fishing "any opportunity he gets. ... Needless to say, I am very concerned. I am praying and hoping for the best."