Sharpe was the first round, seventh overall, draft pick by the Packers in
1988 and had an immediate impact on the team. 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 since
Don 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, in
1992, 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 by
Art Monk in 1984. That season, he became one of only nine 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),
Pete Pihos (1953), and
Raymond Berry (1959) achieved this in the years before the Super Bowl era. The only other players to accomplish this feat are
Jerry Rice (1990),
Steve Smith Sr. (2005),
Cooper Kupp (2021), and
Ja’Marr Chase (2024). In the
1993 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 since
Don Hutson in 1945. Sharpe's tenure at wide receiver was cut short by a
neck 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 had
stinger injuries against Atlanta and Tampa Bay. 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, and
1994). Since he was unable to continue playing and was not on the
Packers team that won the
Super Bowl in
1996, his younger brother
Shannon gave him the first of the three Super Bowl rings he won, citing him as a major influence in his life by saying: In the span of his seven seasons in the League, he was second in receptions and receiving yards and third in touchdowns (with
Jerry 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." In 2002, he was inducted into the
Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. After his retirement from the NFL, Sharpe became an analyst for
ESPN and then the
NFL Network. In 2024, he was named as a Seniors finalist for the
Pro Football Hall of Fame. On February 6, 2025, he was announced as an inductee for the 2025 class. ==NFL career statistics==