Merriman's Positive Outlook

By Les Carpenter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 10, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- Word of the positive steroid test came by letter from the NFL offices. And when Shawne Merriman opened it as he stood in front of his locker at the San Diego Chargers' practice facility, he thought it must have been a joke. His first words were, "What the hell?"

Then he looked around the room, scanning the cubicles for the telltale cameras hidden behind practice jerseys. But there were none.

His teammates dressing nearby did not giggle. Nobody jumped from the shower stalls to say "gotcha."

Instead, Shawne Merriman simply stood alone with a letter saying he had tested positive for steroids and that he would be suspended for four weeks. And only then did he realize that the paper in his hand was not a joke at all but an announcement that the name he had carefully built, his rise from homelessness to becoming the NFL's defensive rookie of the year last year had been tainted, perhaps forever.

All of it diluted to a single word: cheat.

But unlike many of the other players who have received similar letters and also wound up standing bereft in the middle of their locker rooms hoping desperately for a candid camera, Merriman did not disappear. He did not slink into seclusion, but rather held a news conference the day after his suspension was announced. He chose to accept the suspension rather than appeal, knowing he could return in plenty of time for the playoffs, which start Sunday for the Chargers when they host New England in an AFC semifinal.

He took the suspension and came back to Prince George's County, where he starred at Douglass High School and the University of Maryland. He appeared at Maryland football games. He spoke to children at the Greentree Adolescent and Futurebound Independent Living Programs about his childhood, about his time in a homeless shelter when he was young. He even held his annual coat drive on the University of Maryland campus.

"You hide when you have to," he said recently while standing before the same locker where he opened the letter. "You hide when you've done something wrong."

Despite the damning evidence of a league-mandated test and an official letter, Merriman insists he has done nothing intentionally wrong. He said the anabolic steroid his lawyer said was nandrolone must have found its way into a nutritional supplement accepted by the league.

Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and a steroid expert, cites a 2003 investigation done for the International Olympic Committee in which 240 supplements in the U.S. were tested and 45 tested positive for steroids. Nandrolone was the most common. "It is plausible," Goldberg said of the explanation. "There's a reason why the supplement industry needs to be better regulated." Merriman said that until he received the letter from the league, he thought steroids were things that were shot with huge needles. He was going to sue the supplement manufacturer, then decided not to.

This information alone, disbelieved by many, was reason for much of America to mistrust him. Merriman understood this, knew exactly what they were thinking and yet he pushed ahead.

"It was tough when everything happened," he said. "My side wasn't out. I was guilty before I even had a chance to say anything. But I'm not a person who runs from anything.

"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."