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That made me lol. How on earth did Corey Vereen wind up "playing" corner on the App St TD pass? Lol. I'm sure it had something to do with a blitz, but I prefer our DE do the pass rushing for the most part. Surely that was a fluke, or exploitation of whatever we had called.

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It is called the ZONE BLITZ
It happens a lot, with different DCs.  I can recall off the top of my head at least three times we had passes to receivers against a DL.  PROs do it as well.

Vereen actually had pretty good coverage on the play.

Right. I am familiar with the term, and Vereen did have good coverage. I've seen LBs in that situation. Not sure I have seen a DE before.  Not questioning, just found it amusing in hindsight.

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It does happen....You'll see DEs drop into coverage quit a bit if you watch closely.

how well Corey stayed with the receiver.....typically the DE only has to drop back 5-10 yds, Corey was step for step waaay down field, if not for tangling his feet he may have had an INT.      :patriot:

I know. I just thought that was too far for a DL, but I am not the most sophisticated student of the game. Very well played by Vereen!

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Not only are DEs commonly used in zone blitzes, as Phil and Pirate pointed out, but it is a staple of Bob Shoop's defenses. Shoop commonly uses zone blitz reads on first down. That has been a staple of his since the Vanderbilt days. I read somewhere before the season that he basically has three looks out of that zone blitz package, one of them being a nickelback blitz. He also runs a double LB blitz a lot. That was a first down play, and Shoop used the nickelback blitz.

The blitz actually did its job well. The play was designed to go right but the blitzing defenders blew it up. It was just a great play by the QB to quickly turn to his left and look for his RB who was running the wheel route. Vereen also did a good job. AppSt overloaded the right side and then ran the tight end deep on the left side, which took the safety out of coverage. That left Vereen on an island over there with the back coming out of the backfield. He did a good job recognizing it and actually, as these guys said, the coverage was excellent. Vereen's only problem was getting tangled up with himself when he tried to make the tackle.

I thought the catch looked kind of lucky, actually.   The QB did decent, though not great, job of placing the ball, but it almost looked like the WR just kind of stuck his hands out without really looking the ball in and just got it.  Plays like that will happen.