Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt talked to the media during the SEC weekly teleconference Wednesday morning, a day after the Vols matchup with Vanderbilt was postponed.
The postponement came due to COVID-19 issues at Arkansas and the ensuing postponement of the Razorbacks matchup with Missouri. In an effort to make sure all 14 SEC teams play 10 games, the SEC changed the schedule to allow Missouri to play Vanderbilt this weekend, a matchup originally set for Oct. 17.
“We were obviously disappointed that we couldn’t play,” Pruitt said. “But we understand the circumstances. It gives everyone an opportunity to play 10 games this year, so we’re just trying to take advantage of practice days and get some guys rested up.”
The recently created bye week will be the Vols third in five weeks joining their scheduled bye on Oct. 30 and the open weekend that resulted from the postponement of the Texas A&M game.
The open dates haven’t proved helpful on the field for UT, with the Vols dropping matchups to Arkansas and Auburn after their bye weeks. Tennessee was previously 2-1 in Pruitt’s tenure coming off bye weeks.
The Vols head coach talked the balance of having so many bye weeks and the struggles that come with building continuity.
“One thing about football is you want to create the right habits and get into a routine,” Pruitt said. “Obviously, during this entire pandemic there hasn’t been a whole lot of opportunities to do that, but it’s the circumstance. We’ll adjust, we have adjusted, and we have a plan for the next three weeks and we’re going to work hard to reach that plan.”
Tennessee’s next game will be Dec. 5 when they host Florida to Knoxville. It’ll be a tough task for Tennessee to break its six-game losing skid as the Gators have started 6-1 and debut at No. 6 in the college football playoff rankings.
Tennessee’s coaching staff figured out about the change to the season schedule Monday afternoon during practice, shifting their attention from the Commodores to Gators.
“We learned of this Monday afternoon during practice when we were working on Vanderbilt,” Pruitt said. “We just continued to work on Vanderbilt for that day and started moving forward towards Florida over the last two days.”
With COVID-19 making an increased impact on the college football and college basketball seasons, even with Tennessee’s basketball program shutting down operations, the football team hasn’t been able to completely avoid it with Pruitt saying a player tested positive on Sunday.
This comes after a long stretch of no positive tests in the Vols’ program as Tennessee has remained relatively COVID-19 free since the disease plagued UT in fall practice.
While not having the one player that tested positive for COVID-19 is a small inconvenience, the Vols could also have contact tracing issues, similar to the basketball team.
“We have some players in quarantine,” Pruitt said. “I don’t know when they get out, but there could possibly be some, yes.”
How many players there are in quarantine and whether they will be out for the Florida game is unclear and remains something to watch. Pruitt said that all of the Vols quarterbacks should be available in the game.
