SOUTH BEND — Mammoth defensive tackle Tionne Gray, aka “Da Issue,” joined Notre Dame football in January with a personal vision.
After two up-and-down seasons at the University of Oregon, he wanted to transform his game and his frame.
“Right now, I can positively say, even at 335 (pounds), I can run,” he said before his first spring practice with the Irish. “I can be more than just a two-down player. I want to drop weight so I can be more of an effective player too and still be able to play three, four, five, six downs — however many I need to play.”
Listed in Notre Dame’s most recent roster update at 330 pounds on his 6-foot-5 frame, the personable product of St. Louis might not be done shedding weight.
“I plan to drop down to 315, 320,” Gray said. “Just be more mobile so I can feel better while I’m playing. At Oregon, my main thing was power first. I’m a run stopper. That means power. My plan is to add more finesse, more twitch … actually get some finesse moves into my bag.”
The directive didn’t come from his new coaches or the strength and conditioning staff or even Alexa Appelman, director of sports nutrition for the football program. It came from within.
“That’s something I wanted,” Gray said. “They didn’t encourage me. I told them what I wanted to do. They said you have to set a meal plan. Now it’s just, ‘Get to work and drop the weight.'”
Never a ‘one size fits all’ approach
For nearly every one of the 113 players on Notre Dame’s 2026 roster, including 13 walk-ons (unofficially), the endless offseason brings with it a defined goal of either adding or dropping a few pounds.
Others will be tasked with maintaining their weight within a pre-determined range, but at every turn, from June enrollees to fifth-year seniors, the scale will offer a daily reminder.
The process of setting that individual weight goal is collaborative, said Loren Landow, entering his third season as Notre Dame’s director of football performance.
“It’s fluid,” Landow said in March. “Guys come in at a certain body weight, and I think a lot of people put it in their head, ‘I need to be this weight to play at this position.’ And what we do is we talk amongst our performance verticals. We discuss what is realistic in a certain time frame.”
Calendar markers might include the start of spring practice for those just arriving in January, whether as midyear enrollees or incoming transfers. For others, the key date might be closer to early August and the expected start date for this year’s fall training camp.
There is anything but a “one size fits all” approach to the process.
“We talk to the position coaches and the coordinators and say, ‘What’s realistic for them to do their job?'” Landow said. “With also keeping in mind that the age that they are and the developmental level, you want to make sure that you don’t exceed too much weight too soon.”
Everything from prior weight swings to family history is fair game when it comes to solving an ever-shifting puzzle.
“Some of the closest proxies I’ll use, that I start to look at, is if I see a vertical jump decreasing as they’re adding on body weight, then I know performance is probably going to start to decrease as well,” Landow said. “You want to be smart in how you’re putting on the weight. You just don’t want to do it indiscriminately.”
For young offensive linemen and defensive tackles, the 300-pound mark has come to represent a promised land of sorts. Increasingly, over the past three decades, that figure has risen by another 10% or more, depending on what a high-leverage player can safely carry.
Think 6-6 right tackle Aamil Wagner’s Notre Dame journey from 260-pound incoming freshman to 306-pound NFL rookie. Even more stark was defensive tackle Rylie Mills, a Super Bowl champion with the Seattle Seahawks as a rookie, who came in as a 259-pound freshman end in 2020 and bulked up to 295 pounds by his fifth year.
Then again, if the power-speed combination is working for a big man at 285 pounds, as it clearly does for Pittsburgh transfer Francis Brewu, why mess with success?
“He’s strong on the upper body, no two ways about it,” said Landow, who has worked with numerous Olympic athletes and had a previous stint with the NFL’s Denver Broncos. “He’s strong total body. Outside the strength side, the movement, the bend and the burst, those are all things that are just really impressive that you see out of a young man like that.”
Charlie Partridge knows how it should look
Veteran defensive line coach Charlie Partridge, who recruited the 6-1 Brewu to Pittsburgh before spending the last two years in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts, will finally get a chance to coach the plan-wrecking tackle this fall.
Partridge likes Brewu’s weight right where it is.
“It’s relative to (each) person,” Partridge said early in their reunion. “There are certain technique things that each guy is going to have to lean in on a little bit different to maybe get the same job done. And with a guy who’s maybe a little lighter, yes, he’s strong, but the reality is 650 pounds is 650 pounds.”
That’s a reference to the regular double teams Brewu draws from opposing centers and guards.
“He’s going to have to do some technique things absolutely clean to do what we believe he can do,” Partridge said. “He’s working his tail off. He’s strong. Without a doubt, he’s strong.”
When the subject of girth vs. strength on the interior is raised, you can see Partridge flipping back through a mental Rolodex that is as comprehensive as that of any other line coach in the game.
“I’ve been doing this a while, right?” he said with a smile.
At Pittsburgh, defensive tackle Calijah Kancey became a unanimous All-American in 2022 despite having to take on those aforementioned double teams at 6-foot and 280 pounds.
“Calijah Kancey hovered around 280,” Partridge said, “but he was quick as he could be.”
With the Colts, three-time Pro Bowl selection DeForest Buckner remains a dominant force at 6-7 and 295 pounds, but that hasn’t kept the 10-year veteran from mentoring Northwestern product Adetomiwa Adebawore, who plays at 6-2 and 282 pounds.
Whether it’s Brewu sticking where he’s at or Gray seeking to shed 10 or more pounds, Partridge has learned the proof is in the play.
“Here’s my belief on that,” he said. “We’ve got weight-target goals. For me it’s a little bit about lean body mass. And there’s a million studies out there that the more you can have lean body mass as opposed to not, your risk of injury goes dramatically down.
“So, obviously, movement skills (matter). As long as (Gray) loses the right 10 pounds to go from (225) to (215), I’m good. There are some guys that can carry 323. (Colts defensive tackle) Grover Stewart, he was 320 with freaky lean body mass. It’s more about that to me than the other.”
Keon Keeley moves beyond his Tide shifts
The third and final transfer addition for Partridge’s new group, former Alabama defensive lineman Keon Keeley, has undergone a physical metamorphosis already in his first three college seasons.
After bulking up from 242 pounds as a freshman edge to a 282-pound reserve tackle for the Tide, he’s in the process of slimming back down to recharge his career at big end.
Notre Dame lists the Tampa product at 6-5 and 275 pounds.
“Definitely slimming down, that’s the goal,” Keeley said this spring. “That’s something I think was mutually understood that I could slim down to allow myself to be physically the best player I can be for my body type. Realistically, that’s nothing different than any other player.
“I’m trying to get bigger, faster, stronger, but I guess I’d emphasize leaner.”
As a five-star recruit who initially committed to the Irish, Keeley primarily used his quickness to torment opposing quarterbacks. He recalled being “mainly a slimmer guy” in high school, keeping his weight in the 230s and thinking pass-rush first as a hybrid outside linebacker.
“A lot of my stuff came off speed then,” he said, “with a mix of power.”
The Tide moved him inside and bulked him up, inadvertently causing his career to stall.
“There were definitely moments where I had felt like maybe the weight was a little bit different than I had expected it to be,” Keeley said. “Maybe due to the process and the timeline of the weight and the timeline of changing to a different position, because I went from outside backer to realistically a real (defensive) end. It was not outside ‘backer. It was D-end.”
The adjustment process was “humongous,” he recalled.
“I remember I had never taken a double team in my life before my sophomore year of college,” he said. “I had never needed to. I never got double teams in high school, and my whole freshman year of college, the only time I’d get a double team was with a tight end and a tackle.”
As it turned out, the transition didn’t take in 2024.
“(I went) from being a hand in the dirt to getting a double between the tackle and the guard,” he said. “My mentality was to be the best player I could be at that position for my defense and for my team – my former team. Looking forward to my start here, I’d love to be the best player I could be in the scheme for our coaches.”
At Notre Dame, less of Keeley should mean more production this fall.
“Based on our conversations,” he said, “I feel like that will allow me to be a little bit more fluid and loose in our scheme.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How Notre Dame football recalibrates weight targets for all sizes
Reporting by Mike Berardino, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mike Berardino, South Bend Tribune | USA TODAY Network
