"Each year the club gets a little smaller.

They started out as 20 strong. Most of them had impressive names such as Maurice Clarett. But injuries, inconsistency, and most importantly, younger running backs kept thinning out their ranks. This summer Alvin Pearman and J.J. Arrington were shown the door, cut at the end of training camp.

Halfway through season six only seven runners in the heralded 2005 draft class, which many draft analysts declared was the best class of runners in a decade, are left standing.

Ronnie Brown and Cedric Benson, who will faceoff Sunday at 1 p.m. when the Cincinnati Bengals (2-4) host the Miami Dolphins (3-3), are two of the five running backs in that class who still have starting jobs in the NFL.

Joining Brown and Benson, who were two of the three backs taken in that draft's top five picks, as the survivors are Tampa Bay's Cadillac Williams, Brown's teammate at Auburn, who was the other first-round pick. San Francisco's two-time Pro Bowler Frank Gore, a former Hurricane standout, Dallas' Marion Barber, New York Giant' Brandon Jacobs and San Diego's Darren Sproles are the rest of what remains of that much-heralded tailback class."