Car crash took away his Notre Dame football dream. Now, he begins a new one with Purdue.
WEST LAFAYETTE – Joey Tanona surely imagined this — standing on the sideline in Purdue football’s Ross-Ade Stadium as the historic rivalry with Notre Dame resumes.
Maybe it crossed his mind during a mind-blowing visit to South Bend for junior day. Perhaps he and former coach Brian Kelly discussed it during the Zoom call when Tanona committed to the Fighting Irish. The thought could have sustained him through rugged winter workouts in his first weeks on campus.
Only recently, though, did Tanona begin envisioning this day in gold and black.
“Dreams can change,” he said, “and this is the only place I want to be.”
Thirty months removed from the car crash which ended his Notre Dame career — and could have ended more — Tanona made his collegiate debut. He subbed in at left tackle in the second half of Purdue’s 49-0 season-opening blowout of Indiana State.
Safe to say no one on either team appreciated playing even a single snap more than the Zionsville native.
“We talked about resiliency — he embodies that,” Purdue coach Ryan Walters said after the game.
The concussion symptoms which once forced him to step away — the headaches, the vertigo, the shaky balance — long ago subsided. Normal hearing may never return to his right ear. Right now, he said it sounds like someone screaming at him underwater.
Tanona knows tragedy, and fear, and what it means to mourn the loss of a lifelong dream. Now he also knows triumph. An arduous climb ended on Aug. 31. Yet the best part of this film student’s saga may not yet be written.
“It's almost like a story written out of a Hollywood movie — like, it's tough to even make that up,” said Gus Hartwig, a former teammate at Zionsville and current one with the Boilermakers.
“If he's able to do what I think he can do, I think it can be a hell of an ending.”
Like many great stories, Tanona’s came with an unexpected twist.
'It doesn't feel real'
Tanona needed to let someone know he would be late for practice.
He called Josh Lugg, then a Notre Dame senior lineman. In the pre-dawn hours of March 14, 2022 — with the terror and tension of a car crash still cutting the air— a shaken Tanona remained an accountable teammate.
His sister, Meggie, visiting for spring break, had driven him to the Fighting Irish’s first spring practice. Tanona remembers little about the collision, which occurred a short distance from the football facility. He was reclined in the passenger seat. Meggie, who had turned left in front of an oncoming car, screamed. He turned his head, with no time to brace himself, before that car T-boned the passenger side.
Kelly Bendis, Tanona’s mother, arrived to a confusing, “surreal” scene. A totaled car, with its passenger door caved in. Campus police lights in the morning dark. Her children and the other driver standing near the wreck. Her son, disoriented but showing no physical signs of trauma.
“It’s kind of like you’re watching yourself in those moments, and it doesn’t feel real,” Bendis said.
Tanona obviously did not make it to that practice. Doctors at the hospital diagnosed him with a concussion and a case of whiplash. Other symptoms worsened in the following days and weeks.
With the concussion came headaches, and eventually migraines. The football prospect who impressed the college coaches who came through Zionsville with his ability to change directions and bend his giant frame now wobbled from vertigo.
The wreck occurred on Tanona’s 65th day on campus. He is the grandson of Irish immigrants. His father, Joe Tanona, and Bendis both attended Catholic high schools. Even on an offer list which included Michigan, Ohio State and LSU, Notre Dame meant something special to Tanona.
“Once they offered — I'll never forget — he said ‘Coach, I’m done,’ ” Zionsville coach Scott Turnquist said. “I’m done with recruiting. That’s it.”
Bendis once thought her tall son might make a great swimmer. When he fell in love with football, she accepted the associated risks. If anything, she worried more about the smaller players tasked with facing off against her gentle giant of a son.
A broken arm or leg, or a torn knee ligament, would have been easier to accept. The ailment which robbed her son of those football skills, though, was less tangible. When she took Tanona to see a specialist in Michigan and saw for herself the extent of his lack of balance, she broke down.
Reality began to set in for Tanona, as well. Extensive physical therapy yielded slow results. He needed to relearn a lot of football techniques. He felt he was "holding everyone back,”
“There’s that feeling deep down in your stomach, but you just kind of try to ignore that,” Tanona said.
In August, less than seven months after arriving in South Bend and 144 days after the accident, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman announced Tanona had medically retired.
'You always find a way'
Tanona’s name remains on the Zionsville weight room wall as the power clean record holder at 320 pounds. Not bad for a long-limbed athlete. His 390-pound bench press was equally impressive. It also held the record until Eagles defensive lineman Prab Singh passed him this year.
Turnquist said Tanona ran sprint times which rivaled some of the team’s skill players. Then he unleashed that athletic package on opponents with ferocity. He saw him following the same path as Avon’s Blake Fisher and Ben Davis’ Dawand Jones as local giants who propelled themselves to the NFL.
“Joey was kind of on another level from an athleticism standpoint,” Turnquist said, “and he just played with an edge.”
Dylan Gandy, who played the first three of his nine NFL seasons with the Colts, coached Tanona at Zionsville and in the summers. As early as Tanona’s eighth grade season, he recognized the fluid athleticism and body control which might lead somewhere special.
The player recognized it himself around the same time. During a drive to a middle school practice he told Bendis he planned to play in college. That goal became a nearly all-consuming focus from workouts to film study to practice.
“I played every other sport, and there’s really nothing like this,” Tanona said. “You get beat up every day, and you’re always hurting, but you always find a way. It’s like you crave it — coming back here every single day and doing the same thing over and over again — because you want to perfect what you’re doing.”
When all of that disappeared before his Notre Dame career really even started, Tanona needed a new focus. The film major focused on his writing and filming class projects.
He could not, however, shut off the football dream. He remained close with the other Notre Dame linemen. He kept working out and doing offensive line drills on his own. Over time, he regained his balance and the headaches became less frequent.
Last fall, he visited Notre Dame’s team physician for an assessment. Then he visited a neuroscientist in Detroit.
Both came to the same conclusion — Tanona could play again.
“He called me, and I’ve never heard him talk that much,” Turnquist said. “He said, ‘Coach, I’m ready. I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna get going.’ And I"m like, well, timeout — how are you?”
The time to manage expectations would come eventually. First came a celebration. A dream once defeated had converted into one merely deferred.
Tanona remains grateful to Notre Dame for allowing him to remain on scholarship and helping him throughout his ordeal. Per NCAA rules, though, his medical retirement meant he could only return to football with another program.
He called Bendis to let her know he would enter the transfer portal. Despite the potential for another head injury, despite everything she witnessed her son endure in the previous two years, one emotion rose up in Bendis on that call.
Relief. The "truest form" of her son could return.
“I think that there’s risk in football,” Bendis said. “I know he’s coming into this already having had a bad concussion.
“I also know what it was like for him without football, and life is better for him with football.”
'Thank God we got him'
As Tanona emerged from the darkness last fall, Purdue’s offensive line suffered through adversity of its own.
Injuries forced eight different starting lineup alignments and some positional creativity. Hartwig, a veteran center, filled in at right tackle until backup center Josh Kaltenberger also went down.
The Boilermakers could have used an extra body, especially a former top-200 prospect who had been selected to the All-American Bowl after his senior season at Zionsville. They could have used someone with the versatility to move back and forth between guard and tackle while searching for any given week’s best five-man combination.
Hartwig was still living that reality when his phone buzzed with a text from his former Eagles linemate.
“I was like, Gus, I want to come to Purdue,” Tanona said.
Purdue was a natural fit for both parties. That doesn’t mean returning to the field was easy.
First he had to reshape his body. Like most linemen who give up the sport, Tanona’s weight plummeted. His freshman year Notre Dame bio listed him at 284 pounds — around the minimum expected for Big Ten linemen. None of Purdue’s opening-day starters were lister under 300 pounds.
Tanona said his weight dropped as low as 235. He had never run sprints faster. Pull-ups were much easier. But to become a major college lineman again, he needed to start eating like one.
Now listed at 304, Tanona ate 5,500-6,000 calories a day during preseason camp simply to maintain that weight.
The first spring practice went about as expected — awkward, rusty, an athlete catching up to the speed of the game and his own recalibrating coordination. By the second practice, though, Tanona felt things begin to click.
Purdue offensive line coach Marcus Johnson did not expect the player who joined the program last winter to take first-team reps in fall camp. He monitored for headaches and other concussion symptoms. He wondered whether someone who had not been in a real weight program in two years could stand up to the constant pounding of practice.
Tanona impressed Johnson, a second-round NFL draft pick who played five seasons with the Vikings and Buccaneers, with his mental, emotional and physical toughness.
“Thank God we got him,” Johnson said. “I think he’ll play a big, big, big role for this program.”
While it might take another year or more, that versatility could eventually help stabilize a starting offensive line. Tanona realizes a process must unfold. He remains focused on technique, consistency and knowledge of the playbook — “mastering my craft,” he calls it.
It’s a sometimes brutal grind, one for which Tanona feels a unique appreciation.
“You notice people’s drive and their passion for the game out there,” Purdue lineman Mahamane Moussa said. “I feel like he’s excited to be out there, and it’s noticeable.”
'This is my team'
Tanona may hear again one day. A cochlear implant would counter the inner ear damage he suffered and regain some of that auditory sensation.
But an ear implant means no football, Tanona was told. He’ll settle for a muffled version of the cheers he once thought he would never hear.
Bendis called her anticipation for the season opener “like getting ready for Christmas.” Lots of family and friends came in for her son’s debut. More will be in the stadium Saturday against Notre Dame.
Of course they would have been there anyway, if the wreck never happened and Tanona’s career unfolded as he had planned. He does not plan to dwell on the past life represented on the opposite sideline.
“I love these guys more than anything, and this is my team,” Tanona said. “Notre Dame is no longer my team. They’re the opponent.
“It’s gonna be flying around and playing football. I mean, I’m excited.”
The colors of Tanona’s dream changed. So did the location and the time frame. Yet that dream may only get better from here.
Follow IndyStar Purdue Insider Nathan Baird on X at @nwbaird.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue football lineman Joey Tanona faces former Notre Dame teammates
