Former USC Trojan Jurrell Casey had a break out year last season totalling 10.5 sacks for the Tennessee Titans. But playing on one of the lesser-covered teams in the NFL, not many people know much about Casey or the type of player he is. After being impressed by his raw production, I decided to take a closer look at what appeared from the numbers to be one of the up-and-coming interior rushers in the NFL. 

One of the most important attributes a defensive lineman can have is quickness and explosion off the line at the snap. Here, you can see Casey’s quick first step (left defensive tackle lined up in the gap between the right offensive guard and tackle) as he is the first defensive lineman to engage with an offensive lineman on this play, knocking his man into the backfield. The running play goes to the opposite side of the formation in this case so Casey isn’t involved, but his explosiveness off the line is still evident here.

As explosive an athlete as Casey is, he still has some work to do on run defense. He puts a mean move on the right guard here, but abandons his gap in doing so, thereby leaving a wide open lane to the second level of the defense for Danny Woodhead.

Casey, like many young players, could use some work on his technique. Chargers left guard Rich Ohrnberger is hardly a household name, but what he brings to the table is six years of experience. He is able to beat Casey and quickly get his hands on the inside of Casey’s chest here to manhandle him away from the play.

When Casey is able to use proper technique, such as he does here visibly geting his right hand inside on the chest of Nick Hardwick, Casey’s movement skills make him nearly impossible to contain. It's a textbook job disengaging from the block here to make the tackle.

Casey takes on the double team here, staying low in order to gain leverage, then disengaging and making the tackle. This is an extraordinary play that indicates elite run defense ability.

Casey simply uses his sheer speed and athleticism to get to the quarterback here. Center Scott Wells doesn’t seem to expect Casey to be able to move that fast, and doesn’t have a chance to block him. Casey looks like a blitzing linebacker with his freakish straight-line speed as he chases down Kellen Clemens from behind.

Casey again loses out due to poor technique. The Rams guard (66) wins the hand battle and shoves him out of the way easily.

Casey puts a nice swim move on the offensive lineman here. He then displays impressive lateral quickness as he chases the play down the line of scrimmage. He is so fast that he catches up to the pulling guard who Casey originally lined up over.

Casey’s go-to move is the quick swim, which can prove devastating to offensive linemen. Check out the quickness on this play.

Casey has a nice quick swim move, but when that doesn’t work, he doesn’t seem to have much else besides raw athleticism. Here, the left guard combats Casey’s initial swim move, and Casey is rendered ineffective.

Casey plays two gaps here, something he’ll be asked to do more often in Tennessee’s 3-4 defense next year. Watch as he initially defends the B-gap to the offensive guard’s left, then crosses the guard’s face and makes the arm tackle to get in on the stop in the A-gap. Casey didn’t do a lot of two-gapping as the 3-technique in Tennessee’s defense last year, and that probably wasn’t even his assignment on this play. But this play is an encouraging sign for what is to come next year, so long as Casey puts in the effort.

Here’s another instance of Casey tossing his man to the side with a quick arm move.

The offensive lineman is supposed to let Casey by here in order to block for the screen pass, but Casey’s quick get-off is still noticeable. He gets up the field faster than anyone on this play, and ends up pressuring Luck into throwing a poorly placed screen pass.

Here is one of the first times watching Casey where I saw him use a counter move when his initial quick arm move didn’t work. He tries the swim move on the center here, then counters with another swim-type move with his other hand and knocks the center to the ground. If Casey can develop and become more confortable with a larger repertoire of pass rushing and counter moves, he will be one of the best interior rushers in the NFL.

Casey shows some nice hand work here as he sheds the attempted block of Gosder Cherilus and then beats him with speed around the edge. Casey then easily overpowers the tight end and stuffs the wide receiver reverse. Fantastic play.

The Titans played Jurrell Casey a lot—more than any other defensive linemen on almost 82-percent of the total defensive snaps last season. For a big man playing such a physically taxing position such as defensive line, it’s hard to stay fresh playing so many snaps. This means that on some plays like this, Casey is easily blocked by a running back. This isn’t due to a lack of effort, as you can see Casey trying to break free, but rather fatigue as the game wears on.

Casey again wins early with a quick move. His quickness isn’t really North and South—it’s his lateral feet quickness East and West here that he uses to fake out the offensive lineman and get into the backfield.

Finally, a move that isn’t a quick swim! This speed rush combined with Casey’s leverage positioning could be deadly for offensive linemen as it is here—Casey’s skillset is perfect for it. He beats the guard with pure speed to get a hit on Luck’s arm as he makes the throw. It would definitely benefit Casey to go to this move more often, and also to work on converting this speed to power as a further counter move.

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The first thing to know about Casey is his extreme athleticism. He has very good movement skills and is faster and better at changing direction than most offensive linemen. 

He does have occaisional balance and technique issues though, and doesn't always make the most out of his skill set. The primary move in his repertoire is the quick swim move which is a highly effective way of defeating offensive linemen (he did have double-digit sacks last season, after all), but that's basically his only consistent pass rushing move. He occasionally flashed a nice bullrush here and there, and did a good job of converting speed to power a couple times that I saw (which he could really do some damage with if he incorporated it into his game more), but developing a nice rip or stab move to make better use of his arms will also be key to him taking the next step into the elite level of defensive tackles. 

Something else interesting that I noticed is his lack of first-step explosiveness. Players like Gerald McCoy, Ndamukong Suh, and J.J. Watt are all very quick off the line of scrimmage to engage the offensive linemen. However, while Casey flashed a nice quick first step every now and then, he did a lot of dancing around post-snap instead of just getting upfield. If he starts putting consistent effort into getting explosion out of his first step, it could elevate his game even further.

As it stands right now, Casey is a very good defensive tackle, but not a consistently great one. He clearly has the potential to bring his game to the next level if he continues to develop a wider range of means to beat offensive linemen. He would probably benefit from watching film of Brandon Mebane's run defense technique, as Casey's body type and stature are relatively similar to the Seattle Seahawk. As far as expanding his pass rushing repertoire, using leverage and converting speed to power are things that Geno Atkins does well, and it definitely wouldn't hurt for Casey to try to emulate the Bengal defensive tackle. 

In new Titan defensive coordinator Ray Horton's scheme, Horton will probably ask Casey largely to be a one-gap penetrator as a 3-4 end in base defense, and a 3-technique in sub-packages because that is what Casey does best. At times he will be asked to two-gap, which Casey has also shown he can do. Additionally, even though there is evidence that Casey became fatigued at times because of the vast amount of snaps he was asked to play, the additions of players like Al Woods and Sammie Hill will lessen the workload for Casey, which will only help his stamina. 

The way I see it, Casey will only get better as he continues to spend time and develop his game in the NFL. He's in an ideal situation right now, and will likely cash in with a nice contract soon. Athletic, skilled interior pass rushers like Casey are hard to find, and Tennessee has certainly found him. If he wants to bring his game up to the level of guys like Geno Atkins and the aforementioned McCoy, however, he still has some work to do.

You can contact Andrew McKagan here.