The Oregon Ducks returned to practice Tuesday morning after canceling last Saturday’s live scrimmage due to five Covid-19 positive antigen tests.
In a fall camp when time is the most precious of commodities, any temporary suspension of activities and loss of practice time on the field could certainly have an impact on future performances.
“When you lose a scrimmage certainly, it’s pretty impactful” explained Duck head coach Mario Cristobal Tuesday evening.
“You can’t really cram an extra 130 plays in the rest of your schedule. We did plan to play live ball anyways throughout the course of this week, and we have. We did today as well. We went out there and played ball, ….called it,…head-setted it,…the entire thing like normal operations because going into camp we felt that was going to be the most important thing that we can do, is just continue to get repetitions at what we do as we install a new offense,…as we continue to elevate the standard of our defense and special teams.
Of course, it’s always important, but it’s that kind of year where you’ve got to adapt and move on.”
After learning of the five ‘positive’ antigen tests Saturday morning, Cristobal and the Oregon football organization temporarily suspended team activities until the follow up PCR tests could be done.
According to Cristobal, those PCR tests were done to confirm whether or not the initial antigen tests were indeed positive. Those follow-up results returned as ‘false-positives’ which allowed Cristobal and his staff to resume team practices which they did on Tuesday morning.
WATCH MARIO CRISTOBAL’S FULL TUESDAY MEDIA BRIEFING BELOW