Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney announced in Tuesday’s press conference that center Ryan Norton sprained his MCL in his right knee during inside drills at Monday’s practice.

Clemson did an MRI on Norton on Tuesday morning and Swinney said the senior will not play in Thursday’s game against Louisville.

“As you know, he has kind of been banged up on his (left) knee, but this is his good knee,” Swinney said. “All of his ligaments look good, but it does look like he has a pretty good sprain on his MCL so he is definitely going to be out this game and we will evaluate him next week.

“Right now they don’t feel like any surgery is needed or anything like that. That is a real positive for Ryan. It is kind of a day-to-day and week-to-week kind of thing so hopefully with the open date and all of that stuff he is not going to miss a whole lot of time.”

Redshirt junior Jay Guillermo will get the start in place of Norton. Freshman Justin Falcinelli will be the backup.

“There is a perfect example of these first couple of games where we have a chance to kind of play some guys and move some guys around. (Falcinelli) has played a ton at center. He played center all spring. He played center in the spring game, he played center in camp, and he has played a lot at guard. He has had good work there and he will be our backup guy at center.”

Zach Riggs will also make the trip and will be the third team center.

This will be Guillermo’s second career start, but he has a tremendous amount of experience. He played 40 snaps at center after Norton injured his left knee in the season-opener against Wofford and then recorded 50 snaps in last week’s win over App State, again after Norton was shaken up.

Guillermo played in 16 games in his first two seasons prior to this year, but he nearly gave up football in the spring when he dealt with depression issues which caused him to question his passion and love for the sport. After sitting out the spring and realizing how much he missed the game, Guillermo returned in the summer and has been back on the fast track to be the Tigers’ starter since.

“He is doing a nice job and he is still working his way into the groove of things,” Swinney said. “I think each and every day he has come to work and he has been incredibly engaged in what we are doing. Just like anyone else, he has had some good days and some bad days, but he is doing a nice job for us and we are really fortunate that we have him back because I did not know if we were going to have him back or not.

“We are really glad we have a veteran guy like that ready to go.”

Swinney mentioned that regardless if Norton played on Thursday or not, they feel good about the guys they have playing center.

“We will need Jay to step and come through for us, and he will,” Swinney said.

The question now is how will the communication be up front and the snaps with Norton gone?

Guillermo seems to have the fewest, to no, issues when it comes to snapping the ball. Norton was snapping the ball more to Deshaun Watson’s right last Saturday, while Falcinelli was the one responsible for snapping the ball over Watson’s head in the first quarter.

“It does affect things because now your eyes go away from where they need to be and just a little bit out of sync with what you are doing,” Swinney said. “You have to have the right snap to execute and that goes back to what we say all the time, it’s not the big things, it is the little things.”