Billy Price was supposed to be in the prime of his NFL career. Not in a hospital bed staring down his own mortality. Yet on April 24, 2024, the former Ohio State All-American and first-round draft pick found himself undergoing emergency surgery to remove a life-threatening saddle clot that nearly ended more than just his football journey. And that’s how the Buckeye legend, who anchored Urban Meyer’s national championship line in 2014, found himself fighting for life. 

The latest episode on Eleven Warriors on October 3 featured Billy Price at his Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame induction on Friday. “I got checked out of the hospital after having surgery and held my son and just cried,” he said emotionally. “It’s so much bigger than the sport itself. But definitely terrifying. Again, not every day is promised. It’s not just a saying, it’s true.” Because for all the glory of a Rimington Trophy and the roar of NFL Sundays, what sticks with Price is survival.

Previously on Instagram, Billy Price laid it out in blunt terms. “As a healthy 29-year-old, an unprovoked pulmonary embolism with no further medical explanation is terrifying. I am truly thankful to be alive today. Unfortunately, I will be retiring from the NFL as the risk of an internal bleed while on blood thinners creates tremendous risk.” A man once measured by stats, reps, and grades now counts blessings. 

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Billy Price played 69 NFL games, starting 45, including time with the Bengals, Giants, and Cardinals. Drafted No. 21 overall in 2018, he made the Pro Football Writers Association All-Rookie Team, holding his own in some of the league’s toughest line battles. In college, he started all 55 games from 2014-2017, won a national championship, and collected back-to-back first-team All-Big Ten honors, topping it off with the 2017 Rimington-Pace Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year award. Now, as his professional career closes, those accolades aren’t a measure of what he lost, but they’re proof of what he endured and overcame. But as much as he has closed the NFL chapter, the Buckeye pages are wide open.

Billy Price is a Buckeye forever

Billy Price still beams with pride when he talks about his scarlet and gray roots. Now living in Texas, he jokes that his kids will be raised as future Buckeyes whether they like it or not. When asked about his favorite memory, he said the 2014 Sugar Bowl, when Ohio State stunned Nick Saban’s Alabama in the inaugural College Football Playoff. “Everybody talks about the SEC and the South football, ‘it’s a different brand,’” he said. “And for us to go down there at the pinnacle of what Nick Saban and that program… Definitely a statement game.”

Billy Price also embraces his place in Ohio State’s proud center lineage, joining LeCharles Bentley, Pat Elflein, and Seth McLaughlin as Rimington winners. He even tossed some encouragement toward current starter Carson Hinzman saying, “Carson, keep on keeping on. Would love to see you win the next one.”

And when his name was called Friday night alongside nine other Buckeye greats, it was about family, survival, and a brotherhood stitched in scarlet. Billy Price’s career ended earlier than he wanted but his story, and his legacy in Columbus, have only just begun.