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Notre Dame has kind of a wonderful problem this season. While the Irish aren’t very deep in terms of pure numbers in its defensive backfield, they do have an incredible amount of talent that some might say are an embarrassment of riches. Notre Dame returns all of its starters at cornerback
(Leonard Moore and Christian Gray) and its starters at safety (Adon Shuler and Tae Johnson).
Notre Dame does have to replace DeVonta Smith at the nickel, and early in spring ball it looks like the two frontrunners are Dallas Golden (who played quite a bit at Nickel in 2025 as a freshman) and Christian Gray.
You can count me as someone who firmly believed that transfer portal additions DJ McKinney from Colorado, would eventually be the guy that steps into that role — but now I’m not so sure.
In truth, Gray and McKinney are very similar and have played and performed much the same. McKinney won’t officially be on the team until June, so it’s hard to get a great read on all of this — but maybe that just means it’s more likely that Gray becomes the nickel and McKinney works opposite Moore (and other combinations as well).
But what do you think? Hit up the survey and sound off in the comments below.
