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Mizzou-Georgia postponed due to COVID-19 quarantines

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc across the SEC this week. Missouri and Georgia has become the latest matchup impacted.

Missouri announced Wednesday morning that the Tigers' matchup against No. 12 Georgia, scheduled for Saturday at 11 a.m., has been postponed due to "a combination of positive tests, quarantining and subsequent contact tracing of individuals within one position group of the Tiger football program." It is Missouri's second postponed game this season, as the Tigers' game against Vanderbilt originally scheduled for Oct. 17 got pushed to Dec. 12 due to a COVID-19 outbreak on the Commodores' roster.

The school has not announced a make-up date for the game, though Dec. 19 looks like the most probable option. Missouri athletics director Jim Sterk said earlier this season that teams could play on the same day as the SEC championship game if their matchup does not impact the two division winners. If Georgia hasn't been eliminated from winning the SEC East prior to Dec. 12, that could be an option as well, with Missouri hosting the Bulldogs first, then Vanderbilt on Dec. 19.

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This is the fourth SEC game out of the seven originally scheduled for this weekend that will not be played due to COVID-19. Auburn-Mississippi State was postponed Monday due to an outbreak on Mississippi State's roster, although Auburn has since suspended all football activities as well. Tuesday, Texas A&M vs. Tennessee as well as the marquee matchup of the weekend between defending national champion LSU and No. 1 Alabama both got pushed back. Additionally, both Arkansas and Kentucky have reported COVID-19 positives among their coaching staffs, though their respective games are still expected to be played.

Speaking to the media Tuesday evening, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz revealed that Missouri's latest round of quarantines stemmed from a single positive test, although that number could have grown, as the team underwent an additional round of testing Tuesday. He would not specify which position group had been impacted. The SEC established thresholds prior to the season that said a team could opt not to participate in a game if it fell beneath 53 total scholarship players, and that number had to include seven offensive linemen, four defensive linemen and one quarterback.

“Just the nature of the season with injuries, contact tracing, NCAA sanctions, COVID, all kinds of stuff, I think our numbers at a lot of positions are getting tight,” Drinkwitz said.

With its preseason protocols, the SEC left the door open for teams who have fallen beneath the scholarship minimums to still try and play, but Drinkwitz said Tuesday that decision would be out of his hands, saying the team submitted its roster to the SEC and the league office and university administration would make the final call.

Drinkwitz also said that not every Missouri player who misses this week's matchup has already been ruled out for the team's Nov. 21 game at South Carolina. SEC protocols dictate that players who have tested positive for COVI-19 isolate for 10 days, while those deemed high-risk contacts remain in quarantine for 14. A source with knowledge of the situation told PowerMizzou the team is currently optimistic it will be able to travel to South Carolina.

Eli Drinkwitz and Missouri have had a second game postponed this season due to COVID-19.
Eli Drinkwitz and Missouri have had a second game postponed this season due to COVID-19. (Jessi Dodge)

Missouri could have dipped beneath the 53-man minimum, but the most likely cause of this cancelation appears to be the offensive line. Both Hyrin White and Mitchell Walters suffered season-ending injuries before the team played its first game. Thalen Robinson opted out of the 2020 season. Starting right tackle Larry Borom and left guard Xavier Delgado both left the team's win over Kentucky on Oct. 24 due to injury and have not returned to the lineup since. Drinkwitz already ruled both out for the Georgia. Compounding matters further, true freshman Dylan Spencer, who started and played every snap at left guard in place of Delgado against Florida, has been suspended for the first half of the Georgia game due to his role in the halftime brawl between the Tigers and Gators. Drinkwitz said Tuesday players must be available for the start of a game to be counted toward the SEC thresholds. Spencer's suspension will carry over to the first half of Missouri's next game, whenever that may be.

After seeing multiple players and one assistant coach miss games due to COVID-19 across the first three weeks of the season, Missouri had been COVID-free of late. Until this week, the team hadn't reported a positive test for a player or coach since prior to its game against LSU on Oct. 10. Last Thursday, Drinkwitz joked "I'm more worried about leg injuries than COVID right now."

The spree of cancelations across the SEC coincides with a spike in COVID-19 cases both nationally and locally. As of Tuesday afternoon, the most recently available data, Boone County had topped 1,000 active cases. The county's positivity rate from Oct. 30 through Nov. 5, the most recently available period, clocked in at 21.3 percent, the highest positivity rate yet for a single week. The United States as a whole has reported an average of more than 123,000 new cases per day across the past week, nearly 70 percent higher than a week ago.

"The number one thing we know about this virus is it's highly contagious," Drinkwitz said Tuesday, "so we're trying to be very smart about wrapping our arms around it and making sure that there's not a reason to have to pause. But, you know, just like the rest of the country, you're dealing with the highest numbers in the country that we've seen. Us here, we just had one positive and some contact tracing that hampered a position.”

This Is a developing story. Stay tuned for PowerMizzou.com for further updates.

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