The Best NFL Nicknames Of All Time
From "Sweetness" to "Megatron," some NFL nicknames became every bit as legendary as the players who carried them.
Black News 
A great nickname can tell you almost everything you need to know about somebody before you ever meet them. Sometimes it comes from a personality trait, a physical feature or an inside joke that somehow sticks. Other times, a nickname has to be earned, becoming shorthand for exactly what makes a person different from everybody else.
Sports might be the perfect environment for nicknames to flourish. Players are already performing in front of millions of people, and when someone has a distinctive style, personality, or skill set, fans, teammates, and broadcasters naturally look for a name that captures it. Football has been especially good at producing them, with the Pro Football Hall of Fame itself pointing to names like “Mean” Joe Greene, “Prime Time” Deion Sanders and “Megatron” Calvin Johnson as monikers that became inseparable from their Hall of Fame careers.
The greatest NFL nicknames go even further. You don’t necessarily have to say Walter Payton or Dick Lane — “Sweetness” and “Night Train” are enough. From names inspired by refrigerators and Transformers villains to ones that perfectly captured how terrifying somebody was to tackle, here are some of the best nicknames the NFL has ever given us.
Night Train (Dick Lane)
The story behind “Night Train” is almost as great as the name itself. While Lane was trying to make the Los Angeles Rams in 1952, teammate Tom Fears constantly played Jimmy Forrest’s song “Night Train,” and another teammate eventually started calling Lane by the song’s title. Lane went on to become one of football’s greatest defensive backs, recording 68 career interceptions and an NFL-record 14 picks as a rookie — in just a 12-game season.
