Ejuan Price is losing cutoff shorts for the NFL, but he has a new fashion obsession

INDIANAPOLIS — As much as Ejuan Price was known for devastating quarterbacks and getting 29.5 sacks in his Pittsburgh career, he was just as famous for wearing cutoff shorts.

For a large part of his Panthers career, Price was showing a little leg because it helped him feel faster and more free.

Price finished his senior season with the Panthers as a second-team All-American and a finalist for the Chuck Bednarik Award. But the by the end of the season he was wearing more traditional pants and pads that extended below his knee after someone ratted him out.

Don’t expect when Price gets into the NFL in April for him to bring back the cutoff style, even though he’d like to. The NFL’s uniform policy is just as strict as the NCAA’s (which is being tweaked to more explicitly prevent pants like Price’s), and it states “Players’ pants must not be altered or cut in any way and must be pulled over the knee.”

“Yeah, definitely in the league, I don’t think you can do that. You know if I could I would,” Price said at the NFL Scouting Combine on Saturday. “It was fun while it lasted, I had a lot of fun with it and it felt good, but I’ve gotta find something else to take away now. We’ll figure it out as time goes.”

If Price insists on falling back on fashion, he’s an obsessive shoe collector. Whenever he would get a stipend check at Pittsburgh, he would buy a pair or two of shoes a week.

“It was sickening. My mom was sick of me getting shoes shipped to the house I had to start sneaking it,” Price said. “It was interfering with other aspects of my life. I had to clean myself up.”

Price cleaned up his shoe habit, and managed to clean out his collection. He wouldn’t say exactly how many pairs he accumulated at his shoe peak, but he’s down to what he considers a “healthy” amount.

“I’m probably down to 100-something,” he said.

He managed to lower his total shoe count by giving some away to his Uncle Jesse, who wears the same 12-size shoe as Price.

“Sometimes when I don’t wear stuff for a long time I give it away,” Price said. “Or if I buy shoes and never wear them for like eight months, I give them to someone close to me that wears the same size.”

Price’s mom Michelle has taken credit for her son’s shoe love, but the defensive end owes some of it to his uncle.

“He’s always been someone I looked up to, and he has a super big collection,” Price said. “So just being around him, we bonded over it. We always text back and forth about what’s coming out or what we’ve just gotten. I guess he rubbed off on me.”

So when Price gets that first game check as an NFL player, will he be buying something for his mom or more sneakers?

“Why not both,” he asked.