Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Brian Price missed the team’s OTA’s this week after being hospitalized for exhaustion and grief in the wake of his sister’s death, his agent has told local media.
Price, a starter last season in his second year with the Bucs after being drafted out of UCLA in the second round of the 2010 draft, was discharged Thursday after a three-day stay, Charles Price said.
“It was just a situation where like the stress of the whole situation made him sick,” Price, who is not related to the player, told the Tampa Bay Times. “He couldn’t hold anything down. He had headaches, a fever.
“In fact, he just got out of the hospital (Thursday). I can’t speak for him, but I think it was a combination of the mental and physical stress. I was at the funeral and there was just a lot of grief, a lot of anger. His body sort of shut down on him.”
Price’s sister Bridget, 30, was killed in an automobile accident last week. She was a mother to 7-year-old and 9-year-old sons who Price is planning to adopt.
“Obviously, he’s the only son now and there are a lot of young girls in the family,” Charles Price said. “He’s trying to be there, to be the strong one for his family.”
His sister’s death marks the third sibling Price has lost since he was a 10-year-old.
“Bridget was always there for him when his brothers died,” his agent said.
The two brothers were killed five years apart, both after being gunned down in Los Angeles.
“Most people wouldn’t see that much tragedy in a lifetime, let alone in their own family,” Charles Price told the Times.
The Bucs have not commented on Price’s absence. Price was at the airport in Los Angeles preparing to board a flight when he received a call informing him of his sister’s crash.
“He got the call, and it might have been his dad who told him Bridget has been in an accident and I don’t think it looks good,” his agent said, according to the Tampa Bay newspaper. “I don’t think Brian got to see her alive.”
–ESPN
