The Saints had coaches spend Wednesday night at the team facility out of an abundance of caution after Hurricane Francine made landfall in southeast Louisiana at 5 p.m. CT.
“We’ll probably find a corner of the room to lay down in at some point in time and get a little sleep,” Saints coach Dennis Allen said, via the Associated Press. “The most significant weather is going to be this evening into the early morning hours, and so that’s kind of when we’d be trying to wrap up. I don’t see anybody trying to get out of here in that type of weather.”
The Saints moved up practice an hour on their indoor field to allow players to get home to ride out the storm.
“We do have a job to do. Even when circumstances aren’t perfect, we still have to focus,” Saints quarterback Derek Carr said. “I’ll be home studying tonight, you know, but I’ll be doing it with all my kids sitting right next to me.
“I owe it to my teammates to be locked in and be ready to go for tomorrow. We’re human, but we also recognize we have a job to do. And we also recognize that, you know, our city has been through a lot. And so our prayers are with our whole state of Louisiana, you know, wherever this is passing through.”
Francine struck 30 miles southwest of Morgan City as a Category 2 storm.
The Saints headquarters has generator power and has held up in stronger storms than Francine, notably Katrina in 2005 and Ida in 2021. The team evacuated for those two storms, though.
Allen is hoping the Saints can return to a normal schedule Thursday if New Orleans avoids significant damage.
“We want everybody to be safe, and yet we still felt we could get our work done and keep everybody safe and not have to try to go through all the logistics to go through an evacuation,” Allen said.