Merriman's Positive Outlook

"It was hard because you are opening up to people who don't know you and know anything about you."

Ultimately he writes off the experience with a shrug.

"I look at it as a lesson learned," he said.

Whatever the reality is -- that Merriman knowingly took the steroid or whether it was something in another supplement -- it's hard to dispute his status as one of the NFL's most dominant defensive players. When you get the league's four-game steroid suspension, you are not allowed anywhere near your team. You can't talk to the coaches, take part in practice, work out in the facility, even sit at your locker. The NFL mandates that you disappear from the club completely.

Obviously, this concerned the Chargers, as it would any team to have its best defensive player suddenly gone with no idea what he was doing. Was he lifting weights or just sitting around the house watching television?

"I was very anxious to see how he was doing," Chargers Coach Marty Schottenheimer said. "Even though you can be working out, we don't know exactly what kind of shape he's going to come back in. Then he came back and didn't miss a beat."

It's hard to argue with Merriman's performance after his return. He had 30 total tackles and 8.5 sacks in the five games he played after his suspension ended. For the year, he had 62 tackles and 17 sacks.

But having a four-week vacation in the middle of the season can have its advantages. In addition to his speaking engagements and coat drive, Merriman also went to New Orleans and helped to tear apart a flood-damaged house. This was the idea of his publicist, who was friends with Amanda Marais, the events manager for Hands On, an organization helping to rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina.

He had promised Hands On that he would come down before the season but was unable to find the time between training camp and his workout schedules. With four weeks suddenly free, he called back and said he would be happy to come down. He arrived in November with two friends and was assigned a 100-year-old, four-bedroom house on Danneel Street in the Central City neighborhood. They were handed special suits, given masks and axes and told to gut the place.

"They left all the hard work to me," Merriman said with a smile. "What they do is not easy."

At one point he pounded away at a ceiling with a hammer, only to have the whole thing collapse on him.

"They worked their [butts] off," Marais said.

She laughed.

"When the celebrities come here, you don't know what it's going to be like," she said. "They don't want to work, they just want to be in the paper. For me it was a great relief to meet Shawne. There was no publicity, no [garbage]. He said, 'What do you want me to do to help?' "

Back in San Diego, in front of his locker, Merriman wonders if there was a blessing in the suspension. "I think everything happens for a reason," he says. He said his focus got stronger in those days away, that he could barely watch the first Chargers games after his suspension.

"I got even hungrier when I wasn't playing the game," he said. "It makes you feel starved."