Denver's #84 , Shannon Sharpe:
The NFL's Best Tight End

Why is Sharpe, Denver's all-time leading receiver, the NFL's greatest tight end? Well ... he's defined, not just re-defined, the position that's why.

In 1986, John Madden wrote, "As it is now, the tight end is part receiver and part blocker. Which means that no matter how good he is at one, he's usually deficient at the other. That might be the reason a tight end has yet to be elected to the Hall of Fame; nobody is quite sure what a guy is supposed to have done to have the credentials." Since then, Ozzie Newsome has gotten into the Hall.... Still, what about those “credentials?”

Sharpe’s made those TE credentials definitive. He’s knocked Newsome off the top. We’ll be seeing him honored at Canton in the near future.

Between 1990 and 1998, Sharpe made 529 catches from Elway for 6,759 yards and 44 TDs, team best during the #7 era. During the 1998 regular season alone, Sharpe made 64 receptions for 768 yards and 10 TDs, ranking him first in the AFC for scoring as a tight end.

With an NFL career record 815 receptions for 10,060 yards and 62 touchdowns, he's the undisputed best receiving tight end of all time and a three-time Super Bowl champion.

Skills. . ."part receiver and part blocker". . . There's more than one way to block, and one way is mentally, getting into an opponent's head, throwing him off his game.

Sharpe has always talked the best trash, and he has enjoyed living up to his boasts and wit by performing on the field. He's held everybody else who talks big to the same challenge, and most haven't lived up to that challenge.

Best of all, after Denver's 38-3 rout of Miami during the '98 season's Divisional Playoff Game, he dismissed the "sacred" Dan Marino as a "loser." His grandmother got on him about that, and he took the remark back. Too bad. Given the Demigod Marino's '99 performances, Sharpe wasn't talkin' trash; he was prophesying.

It would've been an unpardonable crime if he didn't finish his career with the Broncos. Now he's out of Baltimore and back in Denver, setting all-time career records.

Off the field:

During the 1999 offseason, Sharpe won on Jeopardy.

His favorite cartoon is Space Ghost.

And--
he offers this bit of wisdom: "Always turn to the sports page first. The sports page records people's accomplishments; the front page is nothing but man's failures."