"Brought the best out of me": Coach Prime names 2 NFL superstars as the best receivers to play against in the league 

Deion Sanders hasn't always been the wise coach of the Colorado Buffaloes. He first put together a gridiron career that eventually landed him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, shadowing tons of receivers along the way.

Sanders recently revealed two wideouts stood out to him the most, and he was teammates with both during his time in the league. On Radio Row in New Orleans last week, "Coach Prime" told sisters Brie and Nikki Bella who the most challenging pass-catchers he lined up across from were.

"Jerry Rice and Michael Irvin, I had two of them," Sanders said on 'The Nikki & Brie Show.' "Because they brought the best out of me."

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What did Jerry Rice think of Coach Prime as a player?

Widely regarded as the best receiver in football history, San Francisco 49ers great Jerry Rice reciprocated the high praise for "Coach Prime", despite the players being polar opposites in the ways they carried themselves.

"I implemented a lot of my conditioning," Rice told CBS Sports about his clashes with Coach Prime in October. "If it was a run play, I was still sprinting 60 or 70 yards down field and he was chasing me thinking it was a pass, and just doing it over and over.

"Deion, he was one of the fastest defensive backs on the field, so you had to come to the line of scrimmage with a plan. I was gonna double, triple move him, get him on his base and get to my route.

"When you've got a fast guy like that, you've got to pretty much initiate. He won some battles. I'd like to think that I won the majority of the battles. It was the ultimate challenge where you wanted to go up against the best and you wanted to see what you were capable of," he added.

Michael Irvin also knew how difficult it was to get one over on Sanders during his playing days. The two faced off in college and the pros, before becoming teammates with the Dallas Cowboys. Irvin spoke about Sanders' skills in 2023.

"Deion had one of the greatest talents I've ever seen, he wanted to play both sides," Irvin said on FS1's 'Undisputed' show. "That's how we got him, we said, 'You could play both sides.' I was the one on the phone saying, 'Yeah, you can play both sides.' Then he came over, we were at practice, they were throwing Sanders every ball. I said, 'Hey, y'all stop! Stop playing around!'"

Sanders was included on the NFL's All-Decade team of the 1990s as a cornerback and a punt returner. He was a nine-time first-team All-Pro. He won Super Bowls with both Dallas and San Francisco, two of five different teams he suited up for.