#Jurrell Casey: Titans threw me away like ‘trash’ with Broncos trade

At least that’s how he felt when the Titans traded the defensive tackle to the Denver Broncos earlier this offseason, ending a nine-year run to begin his career. They were mostly lean years for the Titans, who ended a nine-year playoff drought in 2017 and then reached the AFC Championship last season.

Speaking Sunday on the “Double Coverage” podcast co-hosted by twins Devin and Jason McCourty of the New England Patriots, Casey said, “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.”

Jason McCourty can relate. He spent eight playoff-less seasons with the Titans – six as Casey’s teammate – before he was cut and ultimately found fulfillment winning a Super Bowl ring with the Patriots.

“The part that is so crazy is that you give so much to them,” Casey said. “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. 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.”

Casey is a five-time Pro Bowler who signed a four-year, $60 million extension in 2017. The Titans cleared more than $11 million in salary-cap space by trading Casey for a seventh-round draft choice.

Casey, who had five sacks last season, said his agent – not the team – called to tell him he was on the trade market. The Broncos and Titans meet in a Week 1 revenge game to open the 2020 season.

“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.”

Free-agent cornerback Logan Ryan, who replaced Jason McCourty in Tennessee in 2017, was critical of the team’s front office on the “Double Coverage” podcast last month.