Jeremy Pruitt updates Tennessee football dealing with COVID-19, contact tracing

Tennessee plays Florida Saturday at Neyland Stadium.

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Tennessee (2-5, 2-5 SEC) will host No. 5 Florida (7-1, 7-1 SEC) Saturday at Neyland Stadium.

Tennessee enters the contest dealing with student-athletes testing positive for COVID-19 and in quarantine protocol for contact tracing.

Third-year Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt met with media Monday ahead of the Florida game to discuss his team.

“We’ve had two guys test positive, but it dates back to when we came back from Auburn — unfortunately with the contact tracing that number has grown a pretty good bit there,” Pruitt said of how many guys were not available to practice last week due to being in quarantine. “It’s knocked us out of a lot of the guys, which they’ll start coming back in here toward the end of this week.”

KNOXVILLE, TN – AUGUST 17, 2020 – Head Coach Jeremy Pruitt of the Tennessee Volunteers during 2020 Fall Camp practice on Haslam Field in Knoxville, TN. Photo By Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

Pruitt mentioned Tennessee’s quarterback unit has been affected by contact tracing also.

“We’ve had one that’s been affected,” Pruitt said of his quarterbacks. “Listen, the whole part of it is, I’ve tried to be as transparent as we can with it. We can’t say exactly who, but these guys that are out there practicing are working hard to create chemistry with our guys, so we’ll continue to do that this week.”

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