Georgia-Missouri game postponed -- UPDATED --

Saturday's game between Georgia and Missouri has been postponed.

According to a statement from the league office in Birmingham, the contest was nixed due to a combination of positive tests, contract tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals within the Tigers' football program, consistent with SEC Covid-19 management requirements.

"Mental agility is definitely the definition of 2020, It's one of those things where you have a plan for Plan A and you've got a plan for Plan B," head coach Kirby Smart said during Wednesday's SEC teleconference. "We've always had an idea what we would do if there was a cancellation, and when we heard that Missouri was having troubles with Covid, we started putting a plan together to work on us, and we've got plenty to work on."

Missouri has already tentatively rescheduled a game for Dec. 12 against Vanderbilt. According to the league office, the options to reschedule the Georgia- Missouri contest could include Dec. 19, the date of the SEC Championship, as a possibility.

SEC guidelines state that a team should have 53 players available, including at least one quarterback, seven offensive linemen and four defensive linemen to play the following week.

Although UGA does not release its Covid testing data, the Bulldogs' numbers, actual cases and players quarantined through contact tracing, have not been enough to force the program to take any delays.

"I think Ron (Courson) had a good plan. I can't say other teams didn't have a good plan. A lot of it is out of your control except for education and precaution," Smart said. "It's not a crazy amount, it's contact tracing that's really knocking the games out. It's not just the Covid positives. Those are not high in number, but they are higher than they were the last four and five weeks."

For Missouri, this marks the second time that the Tigers have had a game postponed due to Covid-19. The Tigers had one positive test on Sunday, which led to a number of players at one position group being placed in contact tracing. An additional positive was discovered from Tuesday's round of testing.

“We got our test results from yesterday back and it just continued to compound the same issue that we were facing,” head coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “Once you get below a number, we submit it every week, we highlighted we were below a number and we had to be very careful moving forward because of where we were.

“We just got to the point where for the sake of player safety and our threshold, you take your emotions out of it and say this is what everybody’s deemed to be safe and go from there.”

Following last week's 44-28 loss to Florida, Smart said he and his Bulldogs are disappointed that they won't be getting back on the field.

"You're always looking forward to the next opportunity, but the next opportunity is not going to present itself, but we've still got to take this as an opportunity to get better and that's what we're going to challenge ourselves to do today," Smart said. "We've got a lot of young guys on our roster who didn't get spring practice and didn't get fall camp, so those guys will get a chance to get better. Iron sharpens iron and we've got to continue to do that."

With the game postponed, Georgia's next contest is set for Nov. 21 at Sanford Stadium against Mississippi State.