Corey Austin Lynch (born May 7, 1985) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wit ...

safety Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings There are two slightly di ...

. He was drafted by the

Cincinnati Bengals The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The club's home ...

in the sixth round of the

2008 NFL Draft The 2008 NFL Draft was the 73rd annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible American football players. The draft took place at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, New York, on April 26 and April 27 ...

. He played college football at

Appalachian State Appalachian State University (; Appalachian, App State, App, or ASU) is a public university in Boone, North Carolina. It was founded as a teachers college in 1899 by brothers B. B. and D. D. Dougherty and the latter's wife, Lillie Shull Dough ...

High school

Corey graduated from

Evangelical Christian School Evangelical Christian School, also known as ECS, is a private, non-denominational, evangelical Christian school in Memphis and Germantown, Tennessee. It was founded in 1965 and joined Association of Christian Schools International in 1984. It h ...

Fort Myers Fort Myers (or Ft. Myers) is a city in southwestern Florida and the county seat and commercial center of Lee County, Florida, United States. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 92,245 in ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, a ...

. Lynch's father, Brian was his coach at this school. As of 2012, Brian Lynch is still the football coach at Evangelical.

College career

Lynch played collegiate ball at

Appalachian State University Appalachian State University (; Appalachian, App State, App, or ASU) is a public university in Boone, North Carolina. It was founded as a teachers college in 1899 by brothers B. B. and D. D. Dougherty and the latter's wife, Lillie Shull Dough ...

from 2003 to 2007, helping his Mountaineers win 3 back-to-back-to-back national championships in

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...

, 2006 and

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ...

. He is a three-time All-American and is perhaps best known for blocking Jason Gingel's

field goal A field goal (FG) is a means of scoring in gridiron football. To score a field goal, the team in possession of the ball must place kick, or drop kick, the ball through the goal, i.e., between the uprights and over the crossbar. The entire ba ...

attempt in the waning seconds of Appalachian State's 2007 game against Michigan, in which the FCS No. 1 Mountaineers upset the No. 5 nationally ranked

Michigan Wolverines The Michigan Wolverines comprise 29 varsity sports teams at the University of Michigan. These teams compete in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except women's water polo, which competes in the NCAA inter-divisio ...

on September 1, 2007. He currently holds the NCAA FCS record for passes defended at 52 (28 pass deflections, 24 interceptions) and finished his collegiate level play with 358 career tackles. Lynch earned a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

from Appalachian State in December 2007.

Professional career

The

drafted Lynch in the sixth round (177th overall) of the

. On October 12, 2008 against the New York Jets, Lynch recorded his first career interception by picking off

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

Brett Favre Brett Lorenzo Favre ( ; born October 10, 1969) is an American former football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 20 seasons, primarily with the Green Bay Packers. Favre had 321 consecutive starts from 1992 to 201 ...

. Lynch was placed on season-ending injured reserve with a knee injury on October 27, 2008. He finished his rookie season with nine tackles, an interception and a pass deflection in seven games. Lynch was featured in a segment on the HBO show Hard Knocks for saving a woman's life who was in a car accident.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Lynch was signed off the Bengals practice squad on September 23, 2009.

San Diego Chargers

Lynch signed with the

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

for the 2012 season.

Tennessee Titans

On August 11, 2013, Lynch was signed by the

Tennessee Titans The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their h ...

. He was cut on August 31. Lynch was re-signed by the Titans on October 28, 2013. On November 22, 2013, just 25 days after being re-signed with the team, Corey was again waived by the Tennessee Titans.

Indianapolis Colts

On November 26, 2013, Lynch was signed by the Indianapolis Colts. Indianapolis opted to acquire the veteran Lynch after Colts' reserve standout safety,

Delano Howell Delano Andre Howell (born November 17, 1989) is a former strong safety. He was originally signed by the Buffalo Bills as an undrafted free agent in 2012. Howell played his four years of college football at Stanford University first as a running ba ...

, suffered a season-ending injury. Lynch finished his season with the Colts with 4 tackles. On a fake punt, Lynch rushed for 3 yards against the Houston Texans. On June 20, 2014, he was released by the Colts.

Personal

Corey Lynch is married to Jane "Cissie" Graham Lynch, daughter of evangelist

Franklin Graham William Franklin Graham III (born July 14, 1952) is an American evangelist and missionary. He frequently engages in Christian revival tours and political commentary. He is president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and ...

and a grandchild of evangelist

Billy Graham William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018) was an American evangelist and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. He was a prominent evangelical Christi ...

and 2007 Queen of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival. He told reporters he thinks the Bengals, which has seen many players in legal trouble off the field, drafted him because of his character as well as for his playing skills. Corey is also an avid fisherman and enjoys much of his spare time fishing in his home town in Florida. On June 21, 2009, while driving on a Kentucky interstate, Lynch saw a car go off the road and down an embankment. He stopped, ran down to the car, and freed an injured woman's neck. It was written that he saved her life. Corey is known on the Buccaneers by the nickname "HBO", a reference to his appearance on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

's ''

Hard Knocks Hard Knocks may refer to: Films * ''Hard Knocks'' (1924), a comedy short by James Parrott * ''Hard Knocks'' (1979 film), a 1979 American film * ''Hard Knocks'' (1980 film), a 1980 Australian film starring Tracy Mann * '' Hard Knocks: The Chris B ...

'' television series.Scheiber, Dave. "The Bucs' newest Lynch, safety Corey Lynch, gets tuned in". St. Petersburg Times. September 26, 2009 Corey resides in Fort Myers, FL with his wife, Cissie and daughter, Maragaret. Corey's brother, Colton, was a

defensive back In gridiron football, defensive backs (DBs), also called the secondary, are the players on the defensive side of the ball who play farthest back from the line of scrimmage. They are distinguished from the other two sets of defensive players, the ...

on the

Harvard Crimson football The Harvard Crimson football program represents Harvard University in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Harvard's football program is one of the oldest in the world, having begun ...

team having graduated in 2014.

References

External links

Indianapolis Colts bioAppalachian State bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lynch, Corey 1985 births Living people People from Cape Coral, Florida Players of American football from Florida American football safeties Appalachian State Mountaineers football players Cincinnati Bengals players Tampa Bay Buccaneers players San Diego Chargers players Tennessee Titans players Indianapolis Colts players