Trade rumors were swirling around the Silver & Black during the 1990 season.
Many of them were focused on the Raiders' future Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen, who was feuding with team owner Al Davis. While few of the rumors, if any, indicated third-year cornerback Dennis Price would be involved. Especially since he had spent the first six weeks on injured reserve because of a shoulder injury suffered in the final preseason game.
But surprise! On October 15, Los Angeles sent him to the Jets for linebacker Alex Gordon.
"It's kind of funny because leading up to the trade deadline, my wife and I were trying to guess who could be traded. Not thinking I was a possibility," Price said. "Marcus Allen was going through his thing with Al Davis, and we thought Marcus might be traded. But then to find out it was me, and the way that I found out, was kind of shocking.
"On Mondays after a game, we'd go in and watch film and lift weights and all that stuff. My wife, who was pregnant with our first child, called me in a panic saying she needed to get down to the doctor's office because of something related to the pregnancy. So I went up to (the head coach) Art Shell and told him, 'My wife called me with a medical issue with the pregnancy, and I need to go home and go to the doctor with her.' And he was like, 'Okay, no problem.'
"So I went home and was waiting for her because she was still working at the time, and Art Shell called and said I've just been traded to the Jets."
Born and raised in Southern California, Price could have traveled on a Los Angeles city bus from the neighborhood he grew up in, to UCLA, where he was a four-year starter and honorable mention All-America as a senior, to the Raiders, who had selected him in the fifth round of the 1988 NFL Draft.
Understandably, he wasn't too familiar with his new team and was also a little apprehensive about moving across the country.
"As a kid coming up, we didn't get a lot of Jets news. I knew about Joe Namath and the guarantee and beating the Colts (in Super Bowl III) and that kind of stuff. I knew of some players, but I didn't really know a lot about the history of the Jets," Price said.
"I lived in California all my life. I didn't know about living in New York. I didn't even know the Jets were on Long Island. I thought they were closer to New York City. So it's just a bunch of questions and uncertainty surrounding it.
"And they wanted me to get on a plane that night to come to New York. But I couldn't do it because of the whole doctor thing. They were scheduled to play Buffalo that Sunday. I got out there Friday, and didn't make the trip. But I was ready to go by then from a shoulder injury."
Price's shoulder was willing. However…
"The team came back from Buffalo and went through the film on Monday. Tuesday was a day off. And then Wednesday was our next actual physical practice," Price said. "And it had been raining heavily that Monday and Tuesday, so we practiced on the turf field instead of the grass because it was so mushy.
"I was guarding Chris Burkett in one-on-one drills and planted my right leg to drive on the route, and something just kind of buckled. It wasn't really dramatic or anything like that and I was still able to kind of move around, but there was definitely something wrong. And so I didn't finish practice, and then had the MRI, and they were like, 'Your ACL has been torn.'"
Clearly not the best way to begin his time with the Jets, Price underwent reconstructive knee surgery. He then spent the following regular-season on the PUP list while rehabilitating, and was put on the active roster for the first time before the Jets' Wild Card playoff game in Houston.
"It didn't occur until the week before the game," Price said. "They told me, 'Get ready and make sure you're on top of things as far as what we do coverage-wise because we're probably going to activate you for the playoffs.' Let me run around a little bit."
After all he'd been through to reach that point, what did it mean to Price to be able to step back on the field, and maybe more importantly, be able to walk off of it?
"It just felt good being out there contributing to the team, even though I didn't do a whole lot, played mostly special teams, just being out there on the field and kind of completing the comeback from the injury," he said. "Because back then, ACLs, it was a year-long injury for sure.
"The recovery time was a lot longer than what it is now with the medical advances that they've done. It's miraculous how some of these guys can come back now so quickly. But for myself, personally, I was glad to be able to be back on the field, being able to play, and have some idea that it was not the end of my career."
Playing in 14 games in 1992, Price finished fifth on the team in special teams tackles with seven, and also had an end zone interception in New York's Week 2 game in Pittsburgh off of Neil O'Donnell.
Waived at the end of training camp the following season, what are among Price's fondest memories from his time with the Green & White?
"Probably the fondest memory is kind of a double-edged sword being that it's when Dennis Byrd got hurt against Kansas City with the (severe neck injury, breaking his C-5 vertebra) trauma involved in that," he said. "And then we went to Buffalo that very next week, and that's when Buffalo was on their run of the four Super Bowls.
"We played nickel and I got to start that game at right corner. And just being fully engulfed in the game plan and then to be able to beat Buffalo in one of the coldest games [12 degrees wind chill] I've ever played in, and the way we won, with Brian Washington returning the interception (23 yards for a touchdown) to kind of seal the game and the win, 24-17. It was just like divine intervention with the thing that happened with Dennis and then going up there and being able to beat them."
Price had always told himself that if he wasn't picked up by another team within a year after he was cut, that he would move on to the next thing in his life.
"My father-in-law, he was a retired police officer, and just talking to him about what he used to do while he was working, it sounded like something that would be fulfilling for me," Price said. "And so I started applying for law enforcement jobs.
"I had a degree in economics, and while I was waiting to get hired by a police department, I worked in an office and didn't really like being in an office environment. I still wanted to be outside. I still wanted to do something physically demanding and something that's like you never know what you're going to get from day to day."
Becoming an officer with his hometown Long Beach Police Department, Price retired in 2022 after 26 years on the force.
Making their home in Chino Hills, California, Price and his wife Letitia, have two adult children: Sheldon and Kylie.
"Sheldon played (cornerback) a little bit for the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens," Price said. "It was fun to be able to go through that whole process with him and kind of give him some inside knowledge. Even though things had changed from the time I played, it was still enough that I could give him some insight into what was going on and what was going to happen.
"And Kylie, she ran track at UCLA and was an All-America long jumper."
