Whitney Mercilus has always spent this time of the year on the field. He was either sweating through practices in grueling heat or getting into collisions that rival car crashes while banging heads against massive linemen and trying to bring down NFL running backs like Adrian Peterson and Maurice Jones-Drew in preseason games.
This year, however, the recently retired Houston Texans great is in Japan, where he has enjoyed a kaiseki dinner, helped cut a bluefin tuna at a fish market in Osaka and spoke with kids at a football clinic.
Mercilus has not been retired very long, but it's easy to get used to it.