As if adjusting to life without Drew Brees wasn’t difficult enough, the New Orleans Saints will now have to travel to Florida for their regular-season opener, which was originally set for New Orleans.
After being relocated by Hurricane Ida, they’ll play their home opener against Green Bay in Jacksonville on Sept. 12 after practicing for the greater part of two weeks in Dallas – a scenario similar to their 2005 season of displacement following Hurricane Katrina.
The NFL made the announcement. The Saints announced the venue shift three days after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on the Louisiana coast as a Category 4 storm, leaving the entire city in the dark until small pockets of the city regained electricity on Wednesday.
It’s sort of unnerving knowing what’s going on down there (in New Orleans) and not being able to help,” Saints running back Alvin Kamara said. “However, we are doing our best.”
While the Superdome appears to have weathered the storm well, staffing an NFL game there in the near future will be difficult due to severe wind damage in the metro region and huge evacuations both before and after the violent hurricane arrived.
Saints owner Gayle Benson said, “I am proud of the collaborative interactions that transpired amongst many entities in a short period of time that led to us reaching this decision.” “It’s never easy to make a decision like not playing a Saints home game in the Caesars Superdome, but I’m certain that this is the best solution for our community right now.”
The Saints aim to play a lot of home games at the Superdome this season, according to general manager Mickey Loomis.
Following the opener, the Saints will play road games in Carolina and New England before returning home to face the New York Giants on Oct. 3. They have two more road games and a bye week before hosting the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 31.
“When there’s so much going on and so many people are affected, it’s often difficult to maintain the emphasis on it. However, at the end of the day, we have a job to do,” Kamara explained. “All we have to do now is keep advancing and find strategies to counteract it while remaining focused.”
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst confirmed that his team had no input into the choice to play in Jacksonville, which is scheduled to play Houston on September 12.
“I don’t think we had much of a say,” he admitted. “Obviously, they worked with us,” he says, “but with this being a New Orleans home game, we didn’t have a lot of say.”
