Chargers' Seau Has More Than Dolphins On His Mind

SAN DIEGO - He is the best linebacker in the NFL, and so Junior Seau deals with expectations. But these are the easy kind. All the man has to be is himself. Just play football, and let his talent breathe.

"The expectations from other people don't even touch the expectations I have for myself," he was saying here on a dreary, drizzly day last week. "To tell you all my goals would be . . . very boastful."

Sometimes, expectations are harder to look in the eye. Sometimes they stare you down. Beat you back.

Junior Seau's kid brother is in jail, and it has nothing and everything to do with the star player who will imperil the Dolphins' Super Bowl hopes in today's AFC playoff game.

Tiaina Seau Jr. may be Superman on the field, strongest Charger of them all, but he is powerless to give his brother his freedom back.

"He's going through the system now," is how Seau puts it, standing before his locker at Jack Murphy Stadium, agreeing to discuss a subject of which he rarely speaks publicly. "He has to pay for what he did, and he's going to get through it. I'm going to help him through it somehow."

You wonder about the motivation of the Chargers' No. 55? Super Bowl, sure. The usual stuff. But maybe what drives 55 is staying strong for his brother, and doing more for him later than he managed to do before.

Antonio Seau, now 17, got into gang trouble. He is in the early months of incarceration after being sentenced to serve 10 years in

custody at the California Youth Authority for his role in a gang attack in Oceanside. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder. He'll likely serve four years before being eligible for parole.

Junior's younger brother was 15 when he smashed the window of an apartment with a baseball bat, and watched as a fellow gang member fired a shot that wounded a man. Seau's friend got life.

A diagnostic report from the Youth Authority described the younger Seau as having low self-esteem, in part because he always was compared unfavorably with his famous brother.

"I feel bad that Tony had to live with the expectations of doing as well as his older brother," Junior says. "Because that's tough on a young kid. It isn't fair."

Tony got involved with gangs about when Seau was hitting the NFL.

"Right now my only thought is that it's lucky for Tony he's alive," Seau says. "He gets a second chance. He didn't get shot at. He did not die."

It is incongruous hearing Seau speak about such things, because his professional career has been bump-free, beyond any dream. Five seasons, the past four a Pro Bowl player, and this season All-Pro.

Cherished in San Diego and immensely respected league-wide, the inside linebacker is judged a mix of Lawrence Taylor and Mike Singletary. He isn't a dominant sacker; he is everything else. Run-stopper savant, ball-chaser, demon tackler, pass-defender, too . . .

"He is the best defensive player we've faced," Cleveland Browns Coach Bill Belichick said, "and by a pretty good margin."

He is as much the Chargers' star and soul as Dan Marino is Miami's. What man who has ever been tackled by Seau doesn't know his surname is pronounced "Say-Ow"? (If they weren't sure, he has a new clothing line by that name.)

Jay Leno even pronounced it right, or close enough, when Seau appeared on The Tonight Show in November, a first for a Charger - a signal Seau had arrived as a bona fide national celebrity.

All this at age 25.

Perfect. Even the family. Junior, who is Samoan and didn't speak English until age 7, and wife Gina have a daughter, Sydney Beau, now a splendidly healthy 16 months after an early scare. She was born two months premature, with underdeveloped lungs.

"We thought we might lose her," he said.

Seau still fears he might lose his brother. It is the imperfect aspect of a perfect life.

He speaks about his brother being lucky to have not died violently, and you are almost embarrassed to ask how his pinched nerve is feeling.

"I won't be 100 percent Sunday," he said of the injury in his neck/shoulder area. "But it's better. I'm looking to have fun."

He can wall off the pain, because he must. He can give himself to football, to concentration, because to do otherwise would eat his insides.

So he works. To be the best or to help free his mind from his brother's plight . . . the end result is the same. Like the 49ers' Jerry Rice, Seau is both the best NFL player at his position and the hardest working player.

"He's as strong as a lineman and fast as a defensive back," said outside linebacker David Griggs, the former Dolphin. "He chases down receivers. Gets everything. He deserves to be placed in that rare category with LT Lawrence Taylor."

Today, the perfect linebacker unfolds his talents to try to stop the Dolphins, knowing all the while that his brother is not so far away, "going through the system."

On any given Sunday, a professional linebacker can make himself forget about that for three hours. For an older brother, it is harder.

"He's alive and he'll have another chance," Junior Seau said. "That's what you think about."