Nobody was more surprised to see Jurrell Casey get traded by the Tennessee Titans to the Denver Broncos this offseason than Casey himself, and the star defensive lineman equated it to getting thrown away “like a piece of trash.”
In a recent interview on the McCourty twins’ “Double Coverage” podcast, Casey admitted that the trade that sent him to Denver for a seventh-round pick brought him to tears.
He was hurt by the fact that his loyalty to the franchise during its down years wasn’t enough to stop the Titans from trading him after they finally righted the ship, as transcribed by ESPN’s Turron Davenport.
“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 it through. 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 ya’ll. 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.”
The 30-year-old was vital to the Titans’ AFC Championship Game run in 2019. He totaled 2.5 sacks in the postseason, including a strip sack of Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson that helped seal the victory.
Casey says he wasn’t notified “until like 30 seconds before the trade went down” and that it was “a blow to the heart because I would have thought that one of them would have hit me up.”
Instead, it was Casey’s agent who originally gave him the news that the team was shopping him around.
After being drafted by the Titans in the third round of the 2011 NFL Draft and spending nine seasons as one of the faces of the franchise and making it to five straight Pro Bowls the last five years, Casey will be playing for a different team in 2020.
But he won’t have to wait long to exact revenge against his old squad, as Casey and the Broncos will host the Titans on Monday Night Football in Week 1 of the regular season.
Once he found out he’d be facing the Titans right away, Casey shared his reaction on Twitter back in May.
While Casey obviously feels wronged by the Titans, he should know that the fan base was crushed when he was traded. He’ll always have the respect of the Titans faithful and will go down as one of the most beloved players in franchise history.
