Meet Oregon transfer Tionne Gray, aka "Da Issue" for Notre Dame foes
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SOUTH BEND — Oregon transfer Tionne Gray, a 335-pound defensive tackle with a personality to match his uncommon size, arrives at Notre Dame football with a ready-made nickname.
“Da Issue.”
“D-A Issue,” Gray, listed at 6-foot-5, said Wednesday, Feb. 18 in his first visit with local media.
The moniker came from his older brother back home in St. Louis, where Gray starred on both sides of the line for middling teams at Hazelwood Central.
“Going into my junior year, we were sitting down talking, just trying to come up with a nickname,” Gray said. “He just said, ‘Da Issue.’ And I just stuck with it.”
Gray, who wore No. 50 his first two years at Oregon, will switch to “O” with the Irish. That puts him in the same conversation with the late, great Louis Nix III, a 6-foot-2, 342-pound nose tackle who wore No. 1 in 2013 as he closed out his run as “Irish Chocolate.”
Big guys tend to acquire nicknames along the way.
“I’ve always been called Big Red since Little League,” Gray said. “That’s a funny one to me.”
Christian Gray, Notre Dame’s senior cornerback, arrived from St. Louis’ De Smet High School in 2023 with a similar nickname: The Franchise. That was bestowed upon him by his aunt.
With three years of remaining eligibility, Tionne (rhymes with “Deon”) Gray could be a long-term issue for Notre Dame opponents. At Oregon, he made three starts as a redshirt freshman, finishing with 18 tackles, including two for loss, plus a quarterback hurry.
“Nobody is going to outwork me,” he said, “and I’m going to always ― always ― be a team player first.”
Pittsburgh transfer Francis Brewu, a junior defensive tackle who is nearly 60 pounds lighter than Gray, threw his head back and laughed when asked about “Da Issue.”
“Is that what they call him?” Brewu said. “OK.”
Since arriving on campus a month ago, the two interior linemen have shared meals and conversations as they have forged a budding friendship. On the field and in the weight room, Gray has shown indications he could live up to his nickname.
“Man, he’s a freak of nature,” Brewu said. “He’s big, he’s athletic, he’s everything you want in the prototypical D-tackle. And he’s a real good guy, too. He’s a hard worker. I think he’s going to be an issue. I think this whole team is going to be an issue for everybody.”
Tionne Gray’s self-talk: ‘Just go dominate’
Gray asked Notre Dame’s nutrition staff for a meal plan that would help him drop down to 315-320 pounds. He’d like to be even quicker on the field while still maintaining the run-stuffing attributes that demand double teams in the trenches.
He blocked a field-goal attempt to spark Oregon’s first-round romp over James Madison in the College Football Playoff. Gray added two tackles in the 51-34 win, including a shared TFL, and came away with increased confidence he plans to carry over to his new team.
“Once the College Football Playoff got there, I was just like, ‘It’s the playoffs, everything is worth more. Just go. Just go dominate,’“ Gray recalled. “I really showed myself when I play freely how dominant I can really be.”
Gray played 232 total snaps (15.5 average) across 13 games for the Ducks, including all three CFP games. Just 15 of those snaps, combined, came in regular-season games against Indiana and Washington.
He also missed back-to-back games in November against Minnesota and USC with an undisclosed ailment.
Gray admitted he could get “in and out” of his own head at times with the Ducks.
“I’d play freely, but then sometimes I’d be a little hesitant,” he said. “(In the CFP), I made sure I stayed in my gap, controlled my gap, but also I just realized with how big I am, just go dominate. I’m going to go make the play.”
Missouri was also in the mix for Gray before he committed on Jan. 15. Notre Dame’s hiring of former Indianapolis Colts defensive line coach Charlie Partridge played a key role in Gray’s decision, in part because of Partridge’s NFL association with veteran defensive tackle DeForest Buckner.
The seventh-overall pick out of Oregon in 2016, Buckner (6-7, 295 pounds) has made the Pro Bowl three times in his 10-year career.
“One of the main players I studied was DeForrest Buckner,” Gray said. “We have a similar body frame. I know I’m a little bit heavier. I know (Partridge) coached DeForrest Buckner, a great player. That’s who I aspire to be. He coached him; he’ll coach me.”
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: Notre Dame football has a plan-wrecker in Oregon transfer Tionne Gray
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