GAINESVILLE, Fla. — UF coach Dan Mullen and his staff opened a unique and challenging week with the team's usual Monday morning meeting.
It was the first time in 14 days the Gators were together in the same room since a COVID-19 outbreak suspended team activities Oct. 13 and led to the postponement of two games.
Players were spirited and eager to return to football, Mullen said, though it will take a bit for everyone to re-acclimate to the routine and UF to field a full squad due to medical protocols.
Mullen declined to share specifics on who would be available, but he said the No. 10 Gators (2-1) would have at least 53 scholarship players — the SEC minimum — ready to compete at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Swamp against Missouri (2-2).
"Everybody's really excited, ready to get back after it," Mullen said Monday. "I think after not playing, I think that is something that is big within the team right now: that ability to get back out on the field, get back to doing football.
"I don't expect us to come out there and have certainly our sharpest, most crisp practice of the year, but I do expect us to have great energy, excitement and enthusiasm to be on the field to be back out there to get going as we kind of build up to Saturday."
The Missouri game is the first during a seven-week grind for the Gators.
Mullen's squad began the season with College Football Playoff semifinal aspirations but now look to keep their season on track due to the team's defensive shortcomings, a last-second loss at A&M and the COVID-19 outbreak.
After hosting the surging Tigers, winners against LSU and Kentucky the past two weeks, the Gators will face three-time reigning SEC East champion Georgia Nov. 7 in Jacksonville.
During the 14-day layoff, Mullen's players were able to condition and work on their skills without supervision, but conditioning and cohesiveness will not be optimal.
"We've missed a whole bunch of practice opportunities," Mullen said.
Depth also will be an issue because the SEC requires infected players to undergo a four-day period easing back into the full practices.
More than two dozen players and a handful of coaches, including Mullen himself, tested positive for COVID-19 during the 10-day period following the Gators' narrow loss Oct. 10 at Texas A&M.
The Gators had a positive test result for the virus as recently as Saturday, Mullen said. The school is scheduled to report updated test results for all UF athletes Tuesday.
Prior to the outbreak, Mullen had praised his program's ability to avoid infections from the highly transmissible virus. But the UF coach said Monday he had harbored concerns about leaving Gainesville to play a game.
Florida emerged from a Week 1 visit to Ole Miss unscathed but was not as fortunate when it is believed two players infected with COVID-19 boarded the team flight to Texas A&M.
"What we're always worried about is when you look at travel, right, and you're going to take our kind of bubbled group that we have," Mullen said. "You look at the environment through the months of July and August and through September: we had very minimal things, so obviously what we were doing was working."
The confines of the team plane and bus, along with team meals at the hotel and a significantly smaller visitor locker room, intensified the challenge of social distancing.
"When you add those all up, all of those different combinations, you add that up, and you throw the virus in the middle of it ... you're going to get a spread," Mullen said.
Mullen said he has recovered from COVID-19 after experiencing mild symptoms, along with separation anxiety from his wife and two children.
"I feel pretty good. Rested," he said. "I guess being isolated in your house and not being able to see your family, that was probably a low point."
Mullen said the infected players generally fared well, too.
"We've not had tons of, really, a whole lot of major issues or anything that we've seen be really serious to this point," he said.
Mullen is now focused on how the Gators quickly emerge from the outbreak and find their stride on the field.
Dozens of games have been canceled due to COVID-19.
Some teams have navigated the stops, starts and uncertainty better than others. Fourth-ranked Notre Dame, for example, shut down for two weeks but remains unbeaten and is coming off a 45-3 rout of Pittsburgh.
Mullen is anxious to see how the Gators respond to the challenge.
"It's been two weeks since we've practiced, it'll be three weeks between games," he said. "That's not kind of a normal deal. For us, just getting our guys back into regular game-week routine, we'll try to do that today."
