Pruitt: Vols Have 'a Few' False Positives In Sunday Round of Testing, Players Miss Monday Practice

Jeremy Pruitt's team was decimated with contact tracing for the first few weeks of fall practice. At one point, combined with other injuries, Pruitt's team was missing over forty players from practice. An open date last week allowed Tennessee's players to return home for a couple of days and spend time with their families if they chose to.

Pruitt was asked last week about handling COVID during the open week, and he said, "I think the big thing is that it’s very unpredictable. You may feel like you’re doing everything the right way, as far as the masks, but you can’t assume that somebody who’s not in the testing procedure doesn’t have the virus. It’s better to assume, if they’re not in our testing protocol, that they do have the virus and you need to stay away, which is tough. My family is not in the testing protocol, so I get it. A lot of these guys, they see their family members, their girlfriends, grandparents, and friends. We just have to understand that. These guys have worked really hard to try to get the opportunity to be able to play. We did learn some lessons from that."

On Monday of this week, Pruitt was asked if there were any concerns with his team and COVID following the open date. "With the COVID stuff, we get tested on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the results should be coming in any time now," Pruitt told reporters.

During today's SEC teleconference, he updated the status of how that testing went. Pruitt said, " you know, we tested on Sunday, and unfortunately, we did have a few false positives. So we had some guys that had to miss Monday's practice, but they are back, so that was good. I think that has happened all over every testing facility across the country at times."

Pruitt did note it was the first time it had happened to the Vols, "it's the first time it's happened with us, but we did have guys that missed Monday's practice, but they'll be back, ready to go today."

Tennessee had Tuesday off, they will practice today, and then travel to Arkansas later this week for a 7:30 p.m. ET kick-off on Saturday night.

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