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There had been great receiving tight ends before Shannon Sharpe, but it isn't too much of a stretch to say that along with Tony Gonzalez, the former seventh-round pick from Savannah State was the logical and actual predecessor to today's tight end who's more of a big receiver than a true and total fit at the old-school definition of the position. Selected in 1990 as an afterthought receiver, Sharpe morphed into a new kind of tight end, and by 1992, he was in his first Pro Bowl, having caught 53 passes for 640 yards.

From there, it just went up. Sharpe never caught fewer than 64 passes from 1993 through 2000, and his best years in Denver coincided with the Broncos' best years. Sharpe was a First-Team All-Pro in 1997 and 1998, when the franchise own their two Super Bowls.

Moving to Baltimore after the 1999 season, Sharpe helped the Ravens win their first Super Bowl in his first year there — though that team was led by one of the best defenses of all time, Sharpe was the team's leading

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When the debates begin about the NFL's best all-time defense, two teams generally wind up in some sort of tie — the Pittsburgh Steelers' "Steel Curtain" defenses of the 1970s (the best version may have been on the 1976 team; that team pitched five shutouts in a 14-game season) and the 46 defense of the 1985 Chicago Bears. Buddy Ryan's schemes revolved around a series of confusing, confounding, and suffocating pressure packages, and defensive end Richard Dent was at the epicenter of it all.

1985 was Dent's best year in a victory sense — his Bears beat the living daylights out of the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX and he was named the game's MVP — but Dent had a string of great years throughout his 15-year career with the Bears, Philadelphia Eagles, Indianapolis Colts, and San Francisco 49ers. He actually topped 1985's 17-sack total with 17.5 in 1984, and racked up at least 10 sacks every year from 1984 through 1988. As you'll soon discover, he was also pretty impressive in

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Kurt Warner and his receivers may have been the flash of the St. Louis Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf" offenses of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but running back Marshall Faulk was unquestionably the engine. When the Rams traded a couple of draft picks to the Indianapolis Colts for Faulk's services before the 1999 season, that set the most important piece in the offense that won one Super Bowl and came close to another.

Through his 12-year career, Faulk proved to be one of the most effectively versatile backs in league history. He led the NFL in yards from scrimmage in 1998 and 1999, topped the league in combined rushing and receiving touchdowns in 2000 and 2001, and may have had the best-ever three-year span of any running back. From 1999 through 2001, he never ranked lower than second in Football Outsiders' DYAR and DVOA metrics in rushing and receiving among running backs. He was the second player in NFL history to go over 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving in the same

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In the first installment of a four-part series, Shutdown Corner was fortunate to speak to some of the game's best players, analysts, and Hall of Fame players about this year's class of HOF inductees. The first 2011 inductee is Deion Sanders, the ultimate shutdown corner — appropriate, yes?

In his 13-year career from 1989 through 2005, Sanders intercepted 51 passes for 1,331 return yards and nine touchdowns, a pretty amazing total considering the fact that through most of his career, opposing quarterbacks were very reluctant to throw to his side of the field. Basically, once Sanders' sense of the game matched his raw athletic talent, he picked off just about everything that came into his area. And as a punt and kick returner, he was equally unstoppable — he returned six punts and three kicks for touchdowns before the teams he was with realized that they were risking the health of their most important defensive asset on special teams.

Who better to talk about what made  Sanders great

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Pee-wee Herman made a surprise appearance at Dallas Cowboys training camp on Thursday night and posed for pictures with various front office members, coaches and players. No reason was given for the visit, so we'll assume it's because he was invited by Dez Bryant.

Here, the star of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" poses for the 2011 Jones family Christmas card:

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{YSP:more}Do you think Pee-wee has ever been greeted as solemnly and respectfully as he was by Jason Witten? The tight end looks like he's shaking hands with the president or a wounded soldier who sang the national anthem.

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If he was starstruck, he was one of the few. Witten later told reporters that almost nobody on the team recognized Pee-wee.

"The problem is only like three guys in the huddle knew who he was. The older guys know Pee-wee Herman. I think Tyron Smith looked at him like, 'Who's that?' He didn't know him. Gosh, I'm showing my age. I used to be one of the young guys."

Jason Garrett met the former TV star, too, and a

Maybe this was what Mike Shanahan was talking about when he cited his big belief in quarterbacks John Beck and Rex Grossman. The Redskins' head coach has been pilloried around the nation for his seemingly cavalier dismissal of Donovan McNabb and subsequent endorsement of two quarterbacks who haven't done much of note in the league, but the first pictures of Grossman from Redskins camp brought a different side of the Florida alum.

Many different sides, in fact. From our friends at CSNWashington.com (H/T to this here Twitter account):

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And just in case you think this was a case of the camera adding 10 pounds to our man Rex (which begs the question: How may cameras were trained on him?), there's the picture from Friday's E-version of the Washington Post:

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Oh, dear. We knew that some players would come back from the lockout with a Golden Corral scholarship; after all, people are going to respond differently to over four months of unsupervised training. But we would expect this of a lineman

elvisBecause everyone around Brett Favre loves the annual attention paid to the "will he or won't he?" game, the agent of the 41-year-old quarterback issued a loose denial of the all-time passing leader's interest in returning to football.

"Brett Favre's retired, that's all I can say," James "Bus" Cook told ESPN after a since-refuted report surfaced saying the Miami Dolphins were looking to bring back the legendary QB. "He's like Elvis now. People just won't let go."

People won't let it go? How about you won't give them a reason to let it go? So far as I know, Elvis and his people didn't cultivate the image that Elvis was alive every 12 months. I don't think Priscilla was out there winking and saying, "He's not living in Missoula, that's all I can say."

The Favre story is a story because nobody involved in Favre's camp is interested in giving it closure. Granted, even if Bus Cook came out and said, "He will never, ever, ever, ever return to the NFL, period," there'd still be a chance we'd