Sterling Sharpe Belongs in Canton
The former Green Bay Packers great — and current Hall of Fame finalist — is one of the most underrated receivers in NFL history.
I have long had a certain fondness for the Green Bay Packers, dating all the way back to my childhood. Part of that owes to their role as a perennial rival of the hated Dallas Cowboys1 in the mid-1990s, naturally, but part of it had to do with the team’s charismatic, record-breaking wide receiver — Sterling Sharpe, star of both this unforgettable playoff TD and a particularly silly moment in my favorite sports VHS growing up:
But Sharpe also played an interesting role in Green Bay’s burgeoning powerhouse during that era. By the time I was wearing out that tape, he had already been replaced by the likes of Robert Brooks and Antonio Freeman as Brett Favre’s favorite target. Only later would I realize that Sharpe was more than just a proto-Donald Driver, or a funny guy who caught the ball and ran with it before injuries slowed him down.
In reality, Sharpe, who was named a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2025 this week, was a bona fide force of nature at receiver.
I often wax poetic about the hidden gems of the position — guys like Jimmy Smith of the Jaguars, who often flew under the radar but made his teams better. Sharpe, however, was impossible to ignore. The No. 7 pick in the 1988 Draft out of South Carolina — taken 1 pick after another Hall of Famer, Tim Brown — spent his rookie year with respectable numbers (55 catches, 791 yards) catching balls from Don “Majik Man” Majkowski and Randy Wright. But soon he would establish himself as a legitimate rival to Jerry Rice for the crown of the NFL’s top wideout.
In 1989, Sharpe led all players with 90 catches and ranked second to Rice in both receiving yards (1,423) and touchdowns (12, or one more than Cris “All I Do Is Catch TDs” Carter). It was just the eighth time anybody had ever broken the 90-catch barrier in a single season, and the 12th-best yardage season in history at that time… and Sharpe was just getting started.
After compiling 136 catches, 2,066 yards and 10 TDs from a combo of Majkowski, Anthony Dilweg and Mike Tomczak in 1990 and ‘91, Sharpe finally hooked up with a first-year starting QB the Packers had traded for in February 1992: Brett Favre. The chemistry was undeniable, as Sharpe went for 7 catches and 109 yards in Favre’s first game of real action leading the Packers, a Week 3 win over the Bengals. It was the first of seven 100+ yard games and one of 14 outings with at least 5 catches for Sharpe, who finished the season with a league-best 1,461 yards and 13 TDs — plus a new all-time single-season record of 108 receptions, breaking Art Monk’s nearly decade-old mark.
Even greater things were in store for both Sharpe and Favre in 1993. Picking up where he left off, Sharpe had 7 catches for 120 yards on Opening Day against the Rams — setting the tone for another huge year. When the dust settled, Sharpe may have ceded his yardage crown to Rice and fallen behind Atlanta’s Andre “Bad Moon” Rison in TDs, but he broke his own all-time NFL record for catches with 112. If we were keeping track at the time, we’d note that Sharpe now had the two highest-reception seasons ever, and three of the 21 seasons that had ever produced 90 catches (more than anyone else).
And of course, the lasting image of that Packers season will forever be the 40-yard pass Sharpe hauled in from Favre in the back of the end zone to beat the Lions in the playoffs:
After all of that, what was next for Sharpe? Amazingly, he took his game in a different direction for 1994 — after leading the league in receptions each of the previous two years, he recaptured the lead in touchdown catches with 18, tied (behind Rice) for the second-most ever in a season to that point in history. But unfortunately, Sharpe would soon find himself facing a major health crisis.
He was placed on injured reserve on December 29, 1994, following a pair of nerve injuries to the neck that caused numbness in his limbs. Imaging later revealed an abnormality in his top two vertebrae, a condition that required surgery to fuse. Not only would Sharpe not be able to suit up for the playoffs, but doctors warned that it might be unwise to ever play football again. After announcing that he would miss all of 1995, the Packers released Sharpe; while he briefly pondered a comeback in 1996, he ultimately retired to become a TV analyst.
Thus, one of the brightest careers of any receiver in NFL history was extinguished before the age of 30.
The evolution of the game has further eroded the impressiveness of Sharpe’s legacy in the years since. As I’ve written before, the Football Hall of Fame has (and will continue to have) a receiver problem, when it comes to interpreting stats and accomplishments from before the league’s passing boom of the 2000s and 2010s. Numbers that were impressive for their time — particularly compared with the run-heavy earlier eras of football — were quickly buried by subsequent performances that rode the rising tide of offense to even greater heights.
I do have a metric called True Receiving Yards (or TRY), which I co-developed with Football Perspective’s Chase Stuart, that attempts to level the playing field for receivers between different eras by accounting for changes in league passing and schedule lengths (in addition to balancing catches versus yards versus TDs, plus even adjusting for a team’s passing volume). And by TRY, Sharpe still has one of the best peaks by any wideout in NFL history in terms of performance in their best three seasons:
Sharpe also ranks 14th in most TRY in a receiver’s best 5 years, and 26th-best in their best 7 years. Of course, Sharpe has a longevity problem — Rice had more TRY from 1995, the year Sharpe retired, onward (8,878) than Sharpe had in his entire career (7,866) — which may offset his high peak in the minds of many experts. He’s no Randy Moss, either; his quarterbacks weren’t notably better with him than without him.2
But I still believe there’s a lot to be said for a sky-high peak in a sport with careers as short as we see in football. And there’s even more to be said for repeatedly breaking all-time records, particularly at the vanguard of where the game was headed. While Sharpe’s former 1-2 seasons in receptions now rank 40th and 68th all-time, he led the trend that resulted in an eight-year-old record falling in each of the next two years and again in 2002.
Who knows? Without the injury, Sharpe may have re-re-broken that record, too. As it was, he retired too early, but left at the top of his game, battling with Jerry Rice for both records and the mantle of the game’s top WR. For that, he deserves to be remembered more by younger fans — and a spot within Canton’s hallowed halls is perfect for restoring his rightful place in NFL history.
Filed under: NFL, Football Bytes
If not a particularly successful one.
Their Adjusted Net YPA was -0.26 lower in seasons throwing to Sharpe than other parts of their careers.
Not only all that, but Sharpe was a trailblazer in the wat he was used. While he caught passes downfield, Green Bay also used him as a de facto running back, throwing him a lot of quick passes at the LOS and letting him beat defenders with his strength and quickness. This was before it became a widespread part of West Coast (and now all) offenses, and moreover, a lot of the plays were not designed to get two or three blockers out on the edge with him, but were merely designed to use Sharpe's skills in beating defenders by himself. He was at once a guy who could run all the routes at all depths, and a guy who would often bruise his way for a few extra yards. He had a short career, but, hey, Howie Long.