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halftime with a bunch of their players, including guys like (linebackers) Cornelius Bennett and Shane Conlan and they were saying, 'Man, I have never - ever - seen anything like that in my life.

"The guys who played against Barry knew who the best running back was."

That would include Spielman who, as a member of the Bills, played against Sanders and the Lions in 1997.

"I was able to get him a couple of times because he didn't see me coming," Spielman said. "There were a couple of times, though, when he did see me and he put me on his highlight film. I tackled nothing but air."

Spielman tried to follow the same advice he had given his teammates prior to that game: "Don't break down, just take your best shot at him. Every rule that's in the book of tackling - how to fundamentally break down and all of that - when it came to Barry, you threw it out. I told them to take a shot and keep chasing because he might be coming back."

Spielman believes Sanders is the greatest running back because of several amazing attributes: vision, conditioning, speed, quickness and power. Spielman believes Sanders doesn't get enough credit for that last one.

"In practice one day, I hit him by accident," Spielman said. "He had the most powerful legs and I made two mistakes. One, you don't hit Barry in practice and, two, I hit him around his legs and I pulled off a little and didn't wrap up. His legs were so strong he almost tore my arms off. He was rock solid."

Another former Lions player who agrees - partly - with Spielman is quarterback Scott Mitchell.

"I had a front-row seat to some amazing runs. I saw some things I'd never seen before," Mitchell said. "The most amazing thing is that he made really good players look really, really bad. He made them look silly. Think about it, guys like Rod Woodson, Cornelius Bennett, John Lynch . . . the list goes on."

Mitchell, though, said that Sanders could have been even greater.

"He really wasn't interested in running (pass) routes. He could do it and he had good hands, but he just didn't seem to like it," Mitchell said. "I've seen more complete backs, but as a pure runner, nobody is even close to him."

Spielman concurs.

"Nobody could cover him," Spielman said. "If he was half-as-good at route-running as he was at running the ball, he would've been the best receiving back of all-time, too."

It's not that Sanders couldn't be stopped, it just meant that teams had to go to extraordinary lengths to do it.

"I never got any value out of watching film (of opponents)

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