| No. 84 | |||||||||
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| Position | Wide receiver | ||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||
| Born | (1965-04-06)April 6, 1965 (age 60) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | ||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) | ||||||||
| Weight | 207 lb (94 kg) | ||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||
| High school | Glennville (Glennville, Georgia) | ||||||||
| College | South Carolina (1983–1987) | ||||||||
| NFL draft | 1988: 1st round, 7th overall pick | ||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||
| Awards and highlights | |||||||||
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| Career NFL statistics | |||||||||
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Sterling Sharpe (born April 6, 1965) is an American former professionalfootball player who was awide receiver for theGreen Bay Packers of theNational Football League (NFL). He playedcollege football for theSouth Carolina Gamecocks, and played in the NFL from1988 to1994 with the Packers in a career shortened by a neck injury. He became an analyst for theNFL Network. He is the older brother ofPro Football Hall of Fame tight endShannon Sharpe. In February 2025, Sterling Sharpe was selected for induction into thePro Football Hall of Fame.
Sharpe was born inChicago to Pete Sharpe and Mary Alice Dixon.[1] Growing up, Sharpe lived inGlennville, Georgia, with his grandparents and siblings, including his younger brother,Hall of Fametight endShannon Sharpe. He graduatedGlennville High School, playingrunning back,quarterback andlinebacker and was a member of thebasketball andtrack teams. As awide receiver at theUniversity of South Carolina, Sharpe set school records with 169 career receptions and 2,497 receiving yards and a since-broken record of 17 career touchdowns. He also set the school record for single-season receiving touchdowns with 11, which was broken in 2005 bySidney Rice. Sharpe's No. 2 jersey was retired by South Carolina at the end of the 1987 regular season, making him the second Gamecock to be granted this honor while still playing.[citation needed] His college coach and mentor,William "Tank" Black, left the Gamecocks to become a player-manager and represented Sharpe throughout his professional career. Sharpe was inducted into theCollege Football Hall of Fame in 2014.
| Height | Weight | Hand span |
|---|---|---|
| 5 ft11+1⁄2 in (1.82 m) | 202 lb (92 kg) | 9+1⁄2 in (0.24 m) |
Sharpe was the first round, seventh overall, draft pick by the Packers in1988 and had an immediate impact on the team.[2] In his rookie season, he started all sixteen games and caught 55 passes. His sophomore season he led the league with 90 receptions, the first Packer to do so sinceDon Hutson in 1945, and broke Hutson's records for receptions and receiving yards in a season. Sharpe was known as a tough receiver with strong hands, who was willing to go over the middle to make difficult catches in traffic.
A few years later, in1992, Sharpe and the new quarterback,Brett Favre, teamed up to become one of the top passing tandems in the league. In the final game of that season, Sterling and Favre hooked up for Sharpe's 107th reception of the season which broke the NFL's single-season receptions record, set byArt Monk in 1984. That season, he became one of only eight players in NFL history to win the outright "Triple Crown" at the receiver position: leading the league in receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, and receptions.Ray Flaherty (1932),Don Hutson (1936, 1941–44),Elroy Hirsch (1951), andRaymond Berry (1959) achieved this in the years before the Super Bowl era. The only other players to accomplish this feat areJerry Rice (1990),Steve Smith Sr. (2005),Cooper Kupp (2021), andJa'Marr Chase (2024).
In the1993 season he broke his own record, with 112 receptions, which also made him the first player to have consecutive seasons catching more than 100 passes. In 1994, his 18 touchdown receptions were the second-most in league history at the time, behind Jerry Rice's 22 in 1987. On October 24, 1993, he became the second Packer in team history to catch four touchdown passes in one game sinceDon Hutson in 1945.
Sharpe's tenure at wide receiver was cut short by aneck injury. Near the end of the 1994 season, it was found that he had a neck abnormality that needed surgery, as he had looseness in the top two vertebrae in his neck. He hadstinger injuries against Atlanta and Tampa Bay.[3]
He had the surgery and never returned to football. It ended a career in which he was invited to the Pro Bowl five times (1989,1990,1992,1993, and1994). Since he was unable to continue playing and was not on thePackers team that won theSuper Bowl in1996, his younger brotherShannon gave him the first of the three Super Bowl rings he won,[4] citing him as a major influence in his life by saying:[5]
The two people who influenced me the most, good or bad, are Sterling and my grandmother. Everything I know about being a man, about football, everything I know about sports, pretty much in life, is because of those two people.
In the span of his seven seasons in the League, he was second in receptions and receiving yards and third in touchdowns (withJerry Rice ahead of him in each category). His brother Shannon stated during his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, "I am the only person in the Hall of Fame that can say I was the second-best player in my own family."[6] In 2002, he was inducted into theGreen Bay Packers Hall of Fame.[7]
After his retirement from the NFL, Sharpe became an analyst forESPN and then theNFL Network.
In 2024, he was named as a Seniors finalist for thePro Football Hall of Fame.[8] On February 6, 2025, he was announced as an inductee for the 2025 class.[9]
| Legend | |
|---|---|
| Led the league | |
| Bold | Career high |
| Year | Team | GP | Receiving | Rushing | Fum | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rec | Yds | Avg | Lng | TD | Att | Yds | Avg | Lng | TD | ||||
| 1988 | GB | 16 | 55 | 791 | 14.4 | 51 | 1 | 4 | -2 | -0.5 | 5 | 0 | 3 |
| 1989 | GB | 16 | 90 | 1,423 | 15.8 | 79 | 12 | 2 | 25 | 12.5 | 26 | 0 | 1 |
| 1990 | GB | 16 | 67 | 1,105 | 16.5 | 76 | 6 | 2 | 14 | 7.0 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 1991 | GB | 16 | 69 | 961 | 13.9 | 58 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1.0 | 12 | 0 | 1 |
| 1992 | GB | 16 | 108 | 1,461 | 13.5 | 76 | 13 | 4 | 8 | 2.0 | 14 | 0 | 2 |
| 1993 | GB | 16 | 112 | 1,274 | 11.4 | 54 | 11 | 4 | 8 | 2.0 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| 1994 | GB | 16 | 94 | 1,119 | 11.9 | 49 | 18 | 3 | 15 | 5.0 | 8 | 0 | 1 |
| Career[10] | 112 | 595 | 8,134 | 13.7 | 79 | 65 | 23 | 72 | 3.1 | 26 | 0 | 9 | |
Media related toSterling Sharpe at Wikimedia Commons