Mullen eyeing Monday return as Gators recover from outbreak
Florida football paused team activities last Tuesday, but Gators coach Dan Mullen expects to start practicing again Monday.
He tested positive for COVID-19 last week along with multiple staff members and 25 players. Mullen said another player’s test came back positive Wednesday, giving the No. 10 Gators 32 cases for the month of October.
“I’m doing fine,” a nasally sounding Mullen said on the SEC coaches teleconference. “The team, for the most part, is very similar. I think the majority of our guys had very minor symptoms.
“We’re all kind of in quarantine, isolated and working remotely at this point. Out of the abundance of caution, we’ve used this whole time to completely close the program to get back to zero positive tests.”
Florida’s football facilities are closed until Monday, and the round of testing Sunday will determine whether the team can resume team activities. Some will still be quarantined next week, Mullen acknowledged, but he anticipates having enough players available for Missouri on Oct. 31.
“Our expectations are to be back on Monday, at this point. But we’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way,” Mullen said. “Hopefully we’re back Monday. Moving forward, we won’t be at full capacity as a team but we feel pretty comfortable that our numbers would be to the point where we could play the game.”
The Gators haven’t taken the practice field since last Monday, so they will go two weeks without practicing and Mullen admits it's a concern. However, he does feel that the players were “pretty much into game shape” after the first three weeks.
“We’ve got our guys doing some workouts,” Mullen said. “We’ll take our time getting guys in. Obviously health and safety has always been a top priority within our program, so it’s not like on Monday, ‘Hey, nothing’s happened.’
“We’ll build back up a little bit Monday into what we’re doing and getting ourselves back on track ready to go play. But I think our guys, they’ve handled everything so far this year extremely well. I expect them to handle this the same.”
Mullen has been isolating at home in his bedroom and office, adding that his wife and kids have tested negative for COVID-19. His teams usually hold three practices during a bye week, so he’s using this time to do extra prep for the Tigers and work on recruiting with his staff.
“The one benefit here is you have some game-planning you can do,” he said. “We got Missouri coming up, so you get work done on that. Get some stuff done that you wouldn’t normally get done in a bye week. That’s kind of how we’re treating it right now.”