Casey Says Titans Treated Him 'Like A Piece Of Trash' With Trade
Jurrell Casey admitted that it took him a couple days to work through the emotions of being traded.
The mechanics of how it all happened still don’t sit well with him.
“I didn’t get a call until about 30 seconds before the trade went down,” Casey said Sunday on Double Coverage, the McCourty brothers podcast (he appears about 38 minutes in). “That’s the part that kind of hurt the most. I’d say for three or four days I probably had some moments where I probably had to tell the wife to give me a minute because I let a lot of tears come on out of there.
“… When you’re a loyal guy and you feel like things are going in the right direction … and for us to get to that point to get better, and to be a main focus of that and for you to just throw me to the trash like I wasn’t a main [building] block, especially coming off an injury the year before.
“Come off an injury. Play the whole season for y’all. No complaints. Did everything you want me to do and you throw me like a piece of trash.”
The Titans traded Casey, a five-time Pro Bowler, to the Denver Broncos on March 18 in exchange for a seventh-round pick. The primary motivation for the deal was to free up salary cap space.
The third-round pick in 2011 had spent his entire NFL career with Tennessee. Twice (in 2014 and again in 2017), he agreed to contract extensions well before he was scheduled to be a free agent. He played for four different head coaches and endured consecutive seasons in which the Titans tied for the NFL’s worst record.
He said the Titans did contact his agent to let them know they planned to pursue trade possibilities for the 30-year-old defensive lineman. No one in management or from the coaching staff reached out to discuss the plan or Casey’s many contributions to the franchise, he said.
“When I got that news, it was a blow to the heart because I thought one of them would have hit me up, like, ‘Hey, this is the move we’re going to have. This is what’s going to go down. Case, you know everything was great,’” Casey said. “Hey, I would have been fine with that.”
Casey played in 139 games with 137 starts for Tennessee and appeared in at least 14 contests every season He is one of five players in franchise history (one of two during the Titans era) with at least 50 career sacks.
Increasingly, he is getting to the point that he is OK with his current situation, which will include a season-opening contest against his former team this September.
“Hey, God made things happen for a reason, man and put in a great position to go do great things,” Casey said. “Denver, they’ve been welcoming me with open arms.
“… At the end of the day, none of this business is loyal. You’ve got to take care of your company, take care of your business and do what’s best for you and your family. At the end of the day, you harp on it for a little bit, but you got to get over it.”
