Florida Gators Expect to Return to Practice on Monday

Head coach Dan Mullen shared his plan to get the Gators back on the field.

Meeting with the media on the weekly SEC coaches teleconference, Florida Gators head coach Dan Mullen shared that he's "doing fine" following his COVID-19 diagnosis and that the team expects to return to practice on Monday, Oct. 26. 

"Not a whole lot going on with our team right now," Mullen shared. "We're all kind of in quarantine, isolated and working remotely at this point."

The team shared its weekly COVID-19 testing update which saw the program report a total of 25 new positive results after the ticker for October was set at six last Tuesday. As of Monday's results, the university had added 25 cases of coronavirus across the football team within a week, not including Mullen and other assistant coaches. 

Mullen said that the "majority" of players to test positive have experienced "very minor symptoms."

RELATED: Florida COVID-19 testing update (10/20/20)

Mullen shared that another positive test had come in from the team on Wednesday morning, from a test administered on Tuesday. As the team removes itself from the initial outbreak, contact tracing will be crucial in determining if players have wavered from quarantining procedures, something that concerned Mullen.

"Even though we've isolated, we've kind of taken ourselves out of our own bubble," said Mullen. "The kind of structure we had before is not in place. So, we're trying to see now if any new case is kind of consistent from ... the original spread on the team, or if these are individuals kind of not following the quarantine procedure, getting out on their own because there's no football going on right now."

Florida has treated the time off as an extended bye-week. The team is completing some workouts from home while game-planning for future opponents remotely, and also focusing on recruiting efforts.

Mullen plans to "build back up a little bit," in Monday's return to practice after an extended period of time away from the field, however, he isn't worried about the team being out of "game-shape."

Despite positive results continuing to creep in, Florida will follow the SEC's 14-day quarantining protocol which was set in place following Oct. 12's last organized team practice. Barring a setback, the team should be over the conference's 53-man roster guideline and ready to prepare for Missouri on Oct. 31.

"Hopefully, we're back Monday at this point, moving forward," said Mullen. "We still, we won't be at full capacity as a team, but we feel pretty comfortable that our numbers would be at the point where we could play the game."