Hurricane Ida Chases Saints Out of New Orleans

The New Orleans Saints are a franchise that is used to dealing with the effects of a hurricane, and that will be the case once again this season.

Hurricane Ida is currently hitting the United States, and the Saints are being forced to evacuate.

Sources have indicated that the Saints are planning on practicing at the home of the Dallas Cowboys this week. Currently, the Saints are looking at practicing three days in Dallas to begin the week before giving the players some time off before the regular season starts on September 12.

New Orleans is scheduled to host the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, September 12 to begin the 2021 regular season. There doesn’t appear to be a threat to cancel that game at this time, but this will be a situation that is closely monitored.

The Saints were actually forced to cancel their third and final preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals that was scheduled for Saturday. Both teams agreed to move up the game time to earlier in the day, but a decision was made to cancel for the interest of everyone involved.

Ida made landfall just south of New Orleans on Sunday, and it did so as a Category 4 hurricane. The 150 mile per hour winds were some of the heaviest ever recorded in the United States, and the end result could be catastrophic damage.

The arrival of Hurricane Ida came just 16 years to the date that Hurricane Katrina devasted the city of New Orleans back in 2005. That storm forced the Saints to relocate for the entire 2005 season, and they called the city of San Antonio home for the majority of that year.

In 2020, Hurricane Zeta made landfall close to New Orleans as well, but the team was able to stay in the city while preparing for games. This is a story that will continue to develop and changes could be made quickly.

LSU Heading to Houston

The LSU Tigers are another team that has experience in dealing with a hurricane, and they actually made a decision to leave Louisiana before the Saints did. The school announced that it was heading to Houston on Saturday in an effort to beat the storms.

LSU is scheduled to begin the 2021 season with a matchup against the UCLA Bruins in Los Angeles on September 4. The Tigers will leave from Houston on Thursday and head to Los Angeles to make the final preparations for the game.

It is harder for college football programs to relocate to a new city, but LSU is not the only collegiate program in the state that is doing so. Fortunately, there weren’t any college football games scheduled to be played in the state of Louisiana this weekend.

The Tulane Green Wave will be taking on the Oklahoma Sooners in the season opener, and that program has already moved to Birmingham, Alabama. Louisiana-Lafayette is staying home at this time as the Hurricane is not expected to affect that part of the state.

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