RaiderBeat.com Staff
The commander for the U.S. Coast Guard’s St. Petersburg Sector said the search has intensified for Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper and three other men who failed to return from a planned 12-hour fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday.
The Coast Guard has added more planes and employed larger boats. The 87-foot patrol boats used in the initial phase of the search experienced difficulty against the high winds and fierce waves. So, the Coast Guard replaced those boats with two 110-foot boats Sunday night.
Cooper and Detroit Lions defensive end Corey Smith, along with friends Nick Schuyler and William Bleakley left around 6:30 a.m. EST on Saturday for an all-day fishing trip. They haven’t been heard from since their departure.
The Coast Guard said it has not received a distress signal and that the boaters had flares onboard the 21-foot, center-console, single-engine boat. Coast Guard capt. Timothy Close stressed that it’s possible the boaters issued a distress call, but the Coast Guard hasn’t received one.
The U.S. Air Force also has joined the search, centered 50 miles offshore and concentrated in a 750 square-mile area.
Worsening weather conditions are hampering both sea and air searches, the Coast Guard said. The seas are reaching 14 feet and wind gusts are up to 30 mph.
Such conditions create so-called white caps, which make it more difficult to spot the white boat the four men set sail in.
The Coast Guard at 11 p.m. EST switched shifts, refueled its boats and heightened the search.
There isn’t any indication that the men are out of their boat, the Coast Guard said. Therefore, the mission remains a search-and-rescue one.
“It feels like my greatest fear coming true,” Rebekah Cooper said in a TV interview with WTSP.
The Coopers have been married for three years and have a  3-year-old daughter.
“Marquis is extremely laid back, sometimes to a weakness, but fishing is his first love,” Rebekah Cooper said in the TV interview. “It always has been.”
Cooper, 26, joined the Raiders midway through last season and played in eight games as a core special-teamer. He has played for six teams during his five-year NFL career.
Rebekah Cooper said her husband goes boating almost every Saturday.
“There’s nowhere else I would feel more confident than (with) him on a boat, and I have a lot of faith in him out there, regardless of what they may be facing,” she said. “I know that he can pull through it.”
Rebekah Cooper said she first worried when Marquis Cooper and the three others failed to return in the early evening, as planned.
“I knew something was wrong when it was kind of getting past the normal time when I get the phone call, ‘Babe, we’re back on shore,’ ” she said. “Marquis has been diligent about making those phone calls and that didn’t happen (Saturday). That was my first red flag.”
So, she called one of Cooper’s fishing pals, Brian Miller, who alerted the Coast Guard.
Miller said the Coast Guard expedited the search process.
“They have a waiting period for a vessel due in and they were very, very helpful in overriding their criteria to get somebody out there sooner because of the weather that was coming and everything,” Miller said. “Those guys at the Coast Guard have done everything they can do.”
Miller gave the Coast Guard the GPS coordinates of where Cooper and his friends typically go out to in the Gulf of Mexico.
Rebekah Cooper said she always feared something like this happening.
“It’s my worst nightmare to think of anyone I love, especially my husband, in any situation where he is struggling to get back or can’t get in touch with us or get the help he needs,” she said.

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