FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- What fun is a bowl game if you can't pull a little practice prank on your coaches?

When Florida ran out to practice at Barry University on Friday afternoon, the entire defense ran out to practice together. That's slightly atypical, as players usually trickle out in groups after putting on their pads.

Coach Dan Mullen and defensive coordinator Todd Grantham knew something was up. Moments later both of their jaws dropped.

Nobody was the right size.

"We were in the locker room just getting dressed, just talking, getting ready for practice and it was probably (Andrew) Chatfield, but I think Trey Dean said something as well," rush end Jonathan Greenard explained. "Trey Dean, he's like, 'Let's switch jerseys,' so he took (Jabari Zuniga's) jersey and he's running around like, 'I'm Zu! I'm Zu!' And I'm looking and I'm like, 'These guys are really serious.' Next thing you know, we're all like, 'Man, yeah, let's do it!'"

Of course, there had to be method to the madness.

That's where Greenard chimed in with some savvy veteran advice that saved the whole prank for everyone. He had actually tried this prank at Louisville before, only to see the effort thwarted by the coaches.

"I was like, 'We've got to all go out at the same time. We can't go out one by one, they might send us all back in,'" Greenard said with a laugh.

So sure enough, the entire unit ran out at once. Everyone wearing someone else's jersey. Suddenly 358-pound defensive tackle Tedarrell Slaton's jersey belonged to nickelback Kaiir Elam. Slender pass-rusher Mohamoud Diabate's jersey was being worn by defensive tackle Adam Shuler. No one was who they were supposed to be.

"I'll be honest with you, that kind of jacks me up because you're used to seeing this guy, hearing that number, and all of a sudden I see T.J. Slaton playing nickel, and I'm like (what is going on)..." Grantham said with a laugh.

"It threw me off. I mean, I saw Mohamoud out there, and I'm like the dude is stretching his jersey out all of a sudden."

Imagine trying to go back and watch practice film with everyone wearing a different number, right? But Grantham seemed to love the idea, more because of what it represented about the team.

"I think they're very united and I think they have a really good bond," he said. "I think they like playing together. I think that comes from the leadership that we have up top, and it kind of trickles down to guys playing with energy and effort and doing the things they need to do to be good."

That the Gators could cut it loose and still have a productive practice speaks volumes about how well they've soaked in Mullen's message about bowl prep. Have fun when it's time to have fun but don't lose sight of the fact that it's still about football at the end of the day.

In the team's last practice in pads, the guys just wanted to mix things up.

"Honestly, most fun I think was yesterday messing with our coaches by switching up our jerseys, because they weren't expecting it," defensive tackle Kyree Campbell said. "And coach Mullen, he wasn't expecting it. They were calling people by different names yesterday and they were messing up, and the reporters out there, they didn't know who was who. It was chaos."

Organized chaos, though.

After the laughs, it was time for business. And Florida's business is moving from 10 wins in 2018 to 11 wins in 2019. That means beating Virginia in the Orange Bowl on Monday night.

"It's all mentality," Campbell said. "You've got to know when it's time to focus and when it's time to have fun. I think our team is actually pretty good at that."

That's something that's been developed over time. It's part of re-establishing the Gator standard, a phrase Mullen has uttered literally hundreds of times. Now his players get it. That's what the veterans who will depart after this year can leave as a legacy.

Don't be afraid to have fun, so long as you're ready to lock in when it matters.

"It was a good time," Greenard said. "We're in bowl practices, it's our last couple practices with us. Something we had to do to spice it up, so it gave us really good energy.

"We're pretty much around each other all the time and we know each others' tendencies. When we know to lock in, we lock in. We pretty much enforced that back when we were in camp. When it's time to lock in and make some money, we do that."