Dabo Swinney details injury to Troy Stellato

Clemson receiver Troy Stellato has battled numerous injuries throughout his career, including in 2022 when he missed the entire season due to a torn ACL.

“Troy’s always banged up. Always,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney recently said. “I’ve never seen him when something’s not hurting on him. He’s got a hurt thumb or finger or something, but he battles through. He’s a tough kid.”

Swinney added that Troy Stellato is currently dealing with an injury that will require surgery in a couple of weeks.

Stellato is going to continue with spring practice for now, but March 13 will be his final practice of the spring. He will not be on the field when the Tigers return from spring break on March 24.

“He’s actually a guy that probably will not finish spring. We made a decision on him,” Swinney said. “Nothing major, but he needs a clean up surgery. But we made the decision that he needed to really get all the spring he can get before we did that.”

Stellato will get to participate in 10 practices this spring, before being shut down. While it’s not the full spring the way Clemson would prefer, it’s still much more than he typically gets.

Stellato should also be ready for summer workouts and fall camp.

“If you know anything about Troy, he really hasn’t had a spring. He hasn’t really had much of a spring or a fall camp since he’s been here. So it was really important for him. It’s not something that he can’t play with, but we need to get it cleaned up so he can be really 100 percent and just fully pain free there,” Swinney said.

“So he’ll go through spring break, and then we’ll probably do surgery on him after spring break. But I think we’re getting 10 practices in before we break, so that was important and kind of the way we set it up. So he’s going to get the majority of the spring, and then the timing of his surgery and what we need to do with him, we’ll get him cleaned up so he’s full go this summer, so he can have the type of summer that he needs and be ready to go fall camp.”

Troy Stellato signed with Clemson as a four-star recruit and the No. 160 overall player in the country in the class of 2021, according to the On3 Industry rankings.

He didn’t contribute much his first two seasons on campus, before having a bit of a breakout year in 2023. The Florida native had 38 catches for 321 yards and a touchdown over 12 games, with six starts last season.