"Shawne Merriman walked onto the field to facetious applause as the rest of the Chargers began stretching. He spent the next hour catching up with teammates new and old during a walk-through in preparation for a preseason game in which he won't play.

Then he presented a message of moving forward.

"Everything I wanted to say, everything I wanted to express has been said," Merriman said. "And I'm happy to put that in the past and get ready to play football."

Coming off two seasons of relative inactivity, Merriman ultimately decided he had to be on the field, and so he signed his tender Friday morning and reported to training camp two weeks late.

"I think it was time for me to come in and get ready," he said. "You still got a point where you've got to come in and get ready for the season … The only way to emulate football is to play football."

Merriman led the NFL with 39½ sacks from 2005-07 but is now in a place where he must perform at a high level to assure he gets a good contract after this season. It has long been known the Chargers have no intention of signing him to a long-term deal. But Merriman can earn that contract elsewhere if he can remain healthy and return to being explosive and dominant. He missed the final 15 games of 2008 after reconstructive knee surgery and played slightly more than a third of the Chargers' defensive snaps in 2009 while battling a serious foot injury and other ailments."