Shawne Merriman: 20Q

Q1

PLAYBOY: You missed nearly all of last season to have surgery on two torn ligaments in your left knee. How tough was the decision to take the season off?
MERRIMAN: It wasn’t hard once I played the first game. I knew physically I wouldn’t be able to play through a full season. If I was going to get surgery, I had to get it done right then or it would have been lingering the following season.

Q2

PLAYBOY: Was the decision entirely yours, or did you have people pulling you in different directions?
MERRIMAN: My family said, “Boy, you are crazy.” They told me to get it done and sit out the season. My coaches wanted me to make the best decision for myself. It came down to just me and my doctors, which is why I took so long to make a decision. If I felt I couldn’t go out there and play, I would have gotten the surgery before the first game. I pushed and scrounged to try to get one game in. I thought I had a chance to go out there and perform well.

Q3

PLAYBOY: How dangerous is the rebuilt Shawne Merriman?
MERRIMAN: I’m so dangerous right now I scare myself. I’m 100 percent healthy for the first time since entering the league. My first year I tore my posterior cruciate ligament. People didn’t know I had a torn PCL throughout my whole career. My knee had never been 100 percent. Now I’m the strongest I’ve ever been.

Q4

PLAYBOY: Has your nickname always been Lights Out?
MERRIMAN: I’ve always had a nickname everywhere I’ve played football. I played four years with the Boys and Girls Club, and they called me Big Moose because I’d run people over like a moose. Then it changed from Big Moose to Pepco, which is a gas-and-electricity company back on the East Coast. During my sophomore year I knocked four guys out of one game, so I became Pepco until my junior year. They kept calling me that, and I said, “I don’t like that name because if that company goes out of business, I go out of business.” I changed it to Lights Out. Every level I’ve played—high school, college and even in the pros—I’ve been able to knock somebody out to prove I deserve that name.

Q5

PLAYBOY: What is the hardest hit you’ve delivered in the NFL?
MERRIMAN: When I knocked out Priest Holmes. That was probably the hardest hit, and from what I’ve heard, it was one of the loudest hits anybody has ever heard. That’s coming from teammates of his and coaches I saw in the off-season. They said, “Look, man, I was on that sideline when you hit Priest, and that was probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

Q6

PLAYBOY: That hit injured Holmes’s spinal column, sidelined him for the 2005 and 2006 seasons and is said to have led to his retirement. Some critics claim it was an illegal hit.
MERRIMAN: They said a bunch of stuff. When I was in high school parents sent letters complaining that I shouldn’t be on the field with their sons, that I was an animal. It was hilarious. They stopped letting me hit in practice. Whenever we had contact drills, they’d send me over to another field, where I would practice hitting dummies.