Expert Opinion: Billy Price’s Profile
This year’s draft is absolutely loaded with great offensive lineman, such as Mike McGlinchey and Quenton Nelson. One of the more overlooked prospects is Ohio State center Billy Price. He comes in at 6-4 and weighs 312 pounds. He is the perfect size for an interior lineman. At Ohio State, he started and played in a record consecutive 55 games. He was a freshman starter at guard for the team when they won the inaugural National Championship and continued to start for the team until his final game. He also racked up quite a few awards during his time at OSU, including the Remington trophy, which is giving to the best center in the nation and the Rimington-Pace Big Ten Offensive Lineman of the Year award. He went down as one of the greatest linemen in Ohio State history and is looking to make a big name for him in the NFL.
There are a lot of pros and cons to Billy. He is like a brick wall when pass blocking. Watching Michigan film, he very seldom would have their interior lineman push him back. Often, it was Billy who would be pushing the tackle back or at least holding him at the line. However, he had a tough time picking up blocks on delayed blitzes. He was a pretty aggressive run blocker who could really lay some big hits on defenses when he needed to. He often would slip or lose his footing while trying to pull around to get up field while run blocking, which caused him to miss a few blocks, but there were not too many cases of that happening. He is still a big, physical center who loves to be aggressive.
Billy would be a great pick for the Browns in the second round. While there is already a solid o-line, I think the Browns could really benefit from having another big physical guy on the line. He could be moved to guard, where he did play a bit at Ohio State. He would be able to back up Joel Bitonio, in case he does happen to have another injury, or he could battle it out with JC Tretter for the starting center job. He is a low risk, high reward player who has the potential to go down in history as one of the greatest lineman in NFL history.
Billy seemed to have a pectoral muscle in the middle of doing his bench press reps in the combine. While this isn’t great news, he should make a full comback and will still be ready by training camp from the reports so far. His stock will take a hit, meaning he can possibly be a bigger steal than he already was.
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