CANTON, Ohio – Maybe the magnitude of the accomplishment will hit Sterling Sharpe when he walks on stage Saturday and sees his bronze bust that will be displayed permanently in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The former Green Bay Packers star wide receiver will be enshrined into football immortality along with cornerback Eric Allen, defensive end Jared Allen and tight end Antonio Gates as the Class of 2025.
But Sharpe hasn’t been able to celebrate the honor fully because he’s been dealing with problems in his right eye. He was still recovering from eye surgery when his brother, Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe, informed him in front of television cameras that he was selected.
“I had a detached retina, so I was dealing with not being able to see,” Sterling Sharpe said Thursday. “There’s still a chance I won’t be able to see out of my right eye, so for me, I never fully got involved in the process of joy and excitement and what it means and all that because if someone would’ve asked me when I had eye surgery in October: ‘You get to choose. You can have sight and keep your right eye or you can be a Pro Football Hall of Famer.’ I would’ve chosen sight and kept my right eye.
“So I never really in this journey got a chance because I’ve had four surgeries and just found out last week I have a hole in my retina, so I’m probably set up for another surgery, I never got the joy of being able to just deal with that because I’ve been dealing with surgeries, pressure, cataract, detached retina, torn retina, now a hole in my retina.”
Health issues are nothing new for Sharpe. A neck injury cut short his NFL career after seven seasons, delaying his entry into the Hall of Fame because there always was the question of whether he played long enough.
There’s no disputing anymore. He’s in. He’ll receive his gold jacket on Friday night. Sharpe averaged 85 catches and 1,162 yards in his career, finishing with 65 touchdowns. He was named to five Pro Bowls and earned first-team All-Pro honors three times.
Sharpe and his younger brother, who was inducted in 2011, will become the first brothers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“That’s hard for me (to grasp) because where we come from, two little Black boys from Glenville, Georgia, a town of about 2,500 people, this ain’t a dream you have on the farm,” Sterling Sharpe said. “This ain’t a dream you have baling hay and corralling chickens and chasing hogs and picking tobacco. You don’t have this dream. It is definitely truly an honor, truly a blessing from God.
“I honestly am a firm believer that everything doesn’t have to be articulated and explained and this is one of them that’s just a tremendous honor that you look at it the way you walk. But I would be doing us, I would be doing the Hall of Fame, I would be doing this honor a tremendous disservice by trying to talk about how elated, excited, championed we are to be the first brothers in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. This is a lot bigger than any goal or dream that either he or I had as kids.”
Eric Allen
The six-time Pro Bowl cornerback played seven seasons with the Eagles, three with the Saints and four with the Raiders. He had 54 career interceptions, including eight returned for touchdowns.
Allen also played baseball at Point Loma High School in San Diego. He credits that sport for helping him become one of the game’s elite cornerbacks.
“Yes, baseball is a team sport, but when you’re up to bat, it’s you and the pitcher,” Allen said. “That helped me play cornerback because if it’s third-and-7, third-and-8 and you know where they are going with the ball and you’re on that guy, it’s you and him so that skillset plus the coaches I had early on, I was able to play the game from the neck up and that’s an important part of playing cornerback.”
Jared Allen
Allen made five Pro Bowls, was a four-time All-Pro and had 136 sacks in 12 seasons with the Chiefs, Vikings, Bears and Panthers.
He had 22 sacks for Minnesota in 2011, just one away from breaking the all-time single-season record of 22 1/2 sacks set by Michael Strahan in 2001 and tied by T.J. Watt in 2021. Allen actually was credited with a sack on Aaron Rodgers during a game that season, but the official scoring of the play was changed to a team sack after the game. Rodgers dropped a shotgun snap, chased the ball, fell on it and Allen jumped on top of him.
He believes Allen is the record holder.
“Hey Jared, it’s Aaron Rodgers,” Rodgers, wearing a Steelers uniform, said in a video posted on social media by the Vikings. “You are the all time single-season sack leader. I don’t care what the numbers say, because that phantom … sack they took away from you would give you the record. So, in my book, and probably in most Vikings fan books, you’re the all time, single-season sack leader, my friend.”
Antonio Gates
A college basketball star at Kent State, Gates signed with the San Diego Chargers as a free agent and became an All-Pro by his second season. He’ll become the first player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame without playing the sport in college.
He played all 16 of his NFL seasons with the Chargers, finishing with 955 catches for 11,841 yards and 116 TDs.
“I was very fortunate and lucky,” Gates said. “I was doing it one year at a time. I never let my past reflect on my present. I never let my future reflect on my present. I lived in the moment every year. Every year I had to make the team, every year I had to be the best version of Antonio Gates. Every year I had to improve. Ultimately, I ended up tallying 16 years. … It’s a testament to the respect the organization had for myself and the sacrifices that I was able to make.”
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