After spending nine seasons with the Tennessee Titans, veteran defensive lineman Jurrell Casey felt the organization discarded him “like a piece of trash” when it traded the Pro Bowler to the Denver Broncos earlier this off-season.
Casey discussed the trade with New England Patriots defensive backs Devin and Jason McCourty on the Double Coverage podcast, which aired Sunday night. Casey was a former teammate of Jason McCourty with the Titans.
“The part that is so crazy is that you give so much to them, especially when you come up on free agency and have opportunities to go somewhere else. Especially the way it was going when we were there, 2-14, 3-13,” Casey said to Jason McCourty. “Those were some rough times.
“When you’re a loyal guy and you feel like things are going in the right direction and you’re that centerpiece, you got no choice but to fight through it. My mindset was to stick it out and things would get better.
“For us to get to that point to get better and to be a main focus of that and then you just throw me away to the trash like I wasn’t a main block of that … Coming off an injury the year before and playing the whole season for y’all. No complaints, I did everything you wanted me to do and you throw me like a piece of trash. At the end of the day, none of these businesses are loyal.”
During his nine seasons in Tennessee, Casey was a five-time Pro Bowl selection. He was named second-team All-Pro in 2013 after he recorded 10.5 sacks.
Casey signed a four-year, $60 million extension with the Titans in 2017. The team cleared more than $11 million in salary-cap space by trading Casey to the Broncos for a seventh-round draft pick in March.
Casey told the McCourty twins he was working out when he received a call from his agent that the Titans were looking to trade him. He said he was disappointed that the team didn’t tell him directly.
“It was a blow to the heart because I would have thought that one of them would have hit me up,” Casey said. “The part that hurt me the most was that I didn’t get a call until like 30 seconds before the trade went down.
“For three or four days I had some moments where I had to tell the wife to give me a minute and I had a lot of tears come out of there.”
