GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Game week has arrived. Florida football is preparing to kick off its season on Saturday against in-state rival, Miami.

It's the only game in town and all eyes will be on the matchup that is set to kick off College Football's 150th season.

UF is embracing the attention.

“Everybody in the country is ready for college football, excited for college football," said Dan Mullen. "It's Saturday so a lot of teams aren't practicing and a lot of teams haven't started their game week yet. To me one of the great things is not just the fans but all the other teams are watching us. What are they going to see? What's our stamp? When every college person in the country turns on their TV what's their thought when they see the Florida Gators. We have to go out there and live up to that on the field. Everybody is watching … what do you want them to think about you.”

According to the Gators head coach, the biggest challenge this week is having his team transition from fall camp to game week prep.

That goes for coaches as well.

"What's that like, the dream you wake up and you're not where you need to be and you're in your underwear and you just can't seem to get to where you're supposed to be? Right," Mullen joked. "It's a nightmare and it freaks you out, so I try to make sure I never get myself in that situation."

This is when checklists coming in.

"I'm always paranoid this week and like, 'All right, do I have my list?' I just check to make sure I have everything possible that could ever happen in a game or what to do or do I have my whistle, what pen do I have with me? I check everything," explained Mullen.

The Gators head coach has his checklist on his desk and ready to go for Saturday.

"It has lists and a line and a checkmark to make sure everything I have on me," stated Mullen. "You mess up and someone is usually there to help you.

"Someone will get me to the game on time," he joked.

All jokes aside, Mullen hopes his veterans will serve as a great support system to the younger players this week. Transitioning from fall camp to game week prep can be quite daunting, so having those experienced leaders step up can make a difference.

"It's such a big deal of going out to practice today and veteran guys of stepping up to the younger guys of 'this practice is extremely different than the practice we had Thursday," said Mullen. "I mean, couldn't be more different than the practice we had Thursday. We've got to incorporate we're no longer going against our defense in practice. You're going to have different checks. You're going to have different reads on offense. OK? They're going to run different route combinations and different running schemes for the defense to fit. It's not ones, twos, threes running, there's scout-team work. It's just a very, very different mindset. And we've got to make sure the younger guys get everybody into that mindset."

Mullen hopes his team will be ready to make its mark on the national stage, as they continue to try to build from last season's success.

"I think as we're building the program right now and get caught up in a lot of ways in college football-facility-wise and some other ways," explained Mullen. "What we want to do is make sure that we have the most to offer in every category across the board, and when we do, we can get back to that level."

BUILDING DEPTH ON THE O-LINE

The Gators released its depth chart on Monday, which included two freshmen linemen, Ethan White and Michael Tarquin, on the two deep.

However, Mullen did not want to commit to naming his first guard and first tackle off the bench during his press conference earlier.

"I don’t know, we’ll see how this week goes in practice, see how they figure it out," explained Mullen. “A lot of them are young guys. I’ll see how. … they’ve never been through a game week at this level. I’ll see how they handle it.”

MEDICAL REPORT

The Gators have two players ruled out for the regular season: redshirt freshman linebacker David Reese and redshirt junior defensive back CJ McWilliams. Both defenders suffered an Achilles injury.

Towards the end of last week, sources told Gators Territory that Florida had some injury concerns in the trenches with defensive tackle Kyree Campbell suffering a groin injury and offensive lineman Jean Delance suffering an undisclosed leg injury. Sources declared Campbell as day-to-day, while Delance's timeline was more up in the air.

On Monday, Mullen told reporters there were no significant injuries to report on.

"Injury-wise we expect everybody to play," Mullen said. "We have our couple guys with the season-ending injuries, but besides those we’re healthy coming out of training camp, we’re expecting everybody to practice today."

SUSPENSIONS COMING?

Mullen did not elaborate on any suspensions.

“If we have any, like we always do, that’d be something we’d announce on Saturday before the game.”

LATE NIGHT WORK

Florida's first few games will be late kickoffs, so the Gators have adjusted their practice schedule to accommodate that.

"We’re practicing more in the evenings this week for the first couple weeks of the season because our first three weeks are all night games, so we’re trying to practice closer to kick-off time for the first couple weeks," said Mullen.

GATOR CHOMPS

On Feleipe Franks' improvement

“I think he’s already improved more during the offseason than he did throughout last season on the field. In his performance and understanding the system and decision making and making plays. It is the big picture of the quarterback . It’s every intangible that comes with that. How do you manage the game? Your decision making, your leadership, your mental and physical toughness. All of those are aspects of things at the quarterback position that I think he’s taking huge strides at more than he’s completing a higher percentage of his passes. I’ve seen him do all the off the field stuff at a much, much higher level. It’s greater improvement from January to now than all of last season. With the leadership, we’ll see how he’s going to handle the highs and lows and the adversity that we’re going to face whether it’s adversity of success or adversity of defeat and how we handle all of that in between.”

Area during camp that exceeded expectations?

"I don't know if we ever exceed my expectations. I have pretty high expectations. But I thought in camp, overall, I thought our guys ... we had a really solid training camp with different guys. I thought guys were able to make plays and make more plays consistently on a regular basis with our 1s. And those guys that we are going to have to depend on to be playmakers have the ability to go and make big plays within our system. And I think that's pretty good for us."

On the tight ends

"We have five of six on the roster. I think it always comes (down) to scheme. One of the big things about scheme is you're always trying to put your guys in position to be successful, do what they can do well and then take the strengths of our team and get the ball into the hands of our best players and how do we utilize that and that flexibility within your scheme? To me, within our scheme, within our offense, we have the flexibility to probably lead the league in time of possession and to be last in the league in time of possession and have that not really be factor. We have, within our scheme, to try to be a high-scoring offense and to be within our scheme to be a ball-control offense. We have it within that we can play in 10, 11, 12, 13 or 21 personnel, that we can utilize all of that within our scheme depending on the players that we have. So the flexibility to fit that in, to me, has always been a bigger deal of saying, 'Hey, this is our offense, you know, we don't have the players to run that system so we'll just be terrible.' We're going to take the talent we have and then highlight it the best and if we have really good tight ends, we're going to utilize the tight ends more. If tight ends is not one of our stronger positions, we're still going to use them but they're not going to be as highlighted within the scheme."

Kyle Pitts and Lucas Krull's strengths

"The issue is they're inexperienced. But that have athleticism. You've got guys that have can potentially create mismatches on you out there in the field, you know, with size and speed and athleticism at the tight end position. And all of those guys have that. So it's us making sure we're putting them in a position where we can use their athleticism as an advantage and try to create matchups that way."

Have you learned anything from all the negative off-season story lines you had to address?

“I guess. I mean, you’re always getting better or you’re getting worse as a coach. So, every scenario that comes across your desk, you learn from and how you handle situations. I guess having done this now for a lot of times, very few times is that the first time I’ve come across those situations. It just means you’ve been around for a long time, as you get situations. But, I think everything you handle very uniquely. We have a lot this offseason, but you always do. It’s college football. The one thing you don’t have in the offseason is games to talk about, so you can talk about how last year went, how’s the offseason lifting, how’s our development, what’s the quarterback situation, what’s the depth, let’s talk about recruiting, let’s talk about on-the-field issues, let’s talk about off-the-field issues. Don’t have games to talk about, so there’s all kinds of stuff to talk about. We’ve hit a lot of them this offseason. But, I don’t know it’s different than a lot of offseasons, to be honest.”

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