South Carolina OL Cody Waldrop goes down with leg injury during Saturday practice

Some bad news to pass along from the South Carolina Gamecocks' practice field: backup center Cody Waldrop has suffered a significant leg injury and appears to be out for a long amount of time, if not the remainder of the season.

Waldrop, who was sidelined with a knee injury for most of last year, is currently behind Alan Knott on the depth chart. His loss is crucial to a offensive line corps that lists freshmen or redshirt freshmen as backups at every other position. Without Waldrop, the Gamecocks' options at OL are even thinner.

If Waldrop is out for any length of time, USC's backup center could be true freshman Zack Bailey. He took some reps during camp.

— David Cloninger (@DCTheState) September 5, 2015

Waldrop has had trouble with avoiding the injury bug during his time in Columbia. After he redshirted his freshman season, he started six times in 2013 (including the last four games) despite being hampered by a foot injury suffered against North Carolina. He returned in 2014 as the starting right guard in place of Mike Matulis, but went down with a knee injury against Georgia and saw sporadic action after that. He went under the knife in the offseason and returned as Knott's backup in hopes of finally putting together a full season, but this is the latest setback in a career that hasn't fully blossomed as many would think. (It isn't known yet that the leg he injured in practice today is the same leg that he injured last year.)

We will update the story once we get official word from the team, but for now, it appears Waldrop's redshirt junior season is in jeopardy of being lost.