Had the sky not opened up over the mountains and taken him, maybe Doug Miller would've spent the past week trying to connect with everyone. Miller was always the guy, even before cell phones and emails, who tried to keep in touch with his teammates.

Handsome and free-spirited, he rode around on his Harley-Davidson, his chiselled biceps protruding from his biker vest. Miller was appreciative and conscientious. He once was dispatched to make an appearance at birthday party for an older gentleman who was a San Diego Chargers fan. He stayed for the whole party, talked with everybody, and sent the guy a birthday card every year.

Miller lockered next to Junior Seau, who taught him how to be a pro. Seau wore jersey No. 55; Miller No. 54. They were linebackers, which was about the only thing they had in common. Miller would never be a Southern California god like Seau. He was a seventh-round unknown from South Dakota State who earned his paychecks on special teams. But none of that mattered. The 45 men on that 1994 San Diego Chargers Super Bowl team were inseparably tight, and each one of them knew they served a greater purpose.

Junior Seau became the eighth member of the 1994 Chargers, who lost Super Bowl XXIX to the 49ers, to die at a young age. US Presswire

Miller was so proud of that season that he used to wear his commemorative Super Bowl XXIX sweat suit in public. His friends used to tease him about that. They didn't understand what that team meant to him. Miller lasted three years in the NFL before a knee injury ended his career. And when he died in 1998, it was newsworthy not because of the tackles he'd made, but because of the way his life ended.

He was struck by lightning. Twice.

The eerie coincidence that a Charger, a man who wore a lightning bolt on his helmet and died from two lightning strikes, wasn't lost on the people of San Diego. Nor was the fact that in the 3½ years after the '94 Super Bowl, three players from that Chargers team died. First there was linebacker David Griggs. In June 1995, Griggs was killed after his Lexus skidded off a South Florida expressway ramp and into a pole. He was a short drive away from where the Chargers had played in the Super Bowl months before. He was 28. Then came Rodney Culver, who went on a cruise with his wife, Karen, in 1996, and left early because they missed their kids. The couple perished when ValuJet Flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades. Rodney Culver was 26.

Four more teammates died from 2008 to 2011, two from heart attacks, one from an enlarged heart, another from a drug overdose. All of them were under the age of 45. All of those left behind kept hoping that the phone calls and the bad news would finally stop.

They didn't. Last week, Seau was found dead in his Oceanside, Calif., home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The face of the team was added to the Chargers' somber list.

"It's insane, isn't it?" said Blaise Winter, a defensive tackle on the '94 team. "I mean, Chris Mims, [Shawn] Lee, Miller, Rodney. ... It's like, 'Is the ceiling above my head going to fall on me?'

"So many good people ... I'd rather look at it that way. I'd rather look at it as all eight were good people who had good intentions for the world around them and themselves. It's amazing to me. It's just mind-blowing how many guys we've lost in weird ways from that team."

In Arizona, Miller's mother, Colleen Miller, was sitting at her computer last Wednesday when she saw the news of Seau's death. It brought back sad memories. Every time a Charger dies, this happens. But for a moment, it also took her to a much better time -- of Seau mentoring Miller, of young men with their whole lives ahead of them.

"My daughter came in from the airport the morning after Doug died ... and I can remember going to pick her up and looking out at the street at all these people who were going to work and doing these mundane things. I thought, 'I wonder how many people are like me, they're in a car and just thinking their life is over?' And that's how I felt for a while. Not that my life was over. That's a little dramatic. But how could this happen?"

On a rainy January day in 1995, roughly 70,000 people packed into San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium to greet the Chargers after their upset victory at Pittsburgh for the AFC Championship. San Diego did not win the Super Bowl that season; the Chargers lost 49-26 to the San Francisco 49ers two weeks later in Miami.