We still don’t know what the New Orleans Saints’ regular season schedule will look like, but their plans for the preseason are beginning to take shape. Nola.com’s Jeff Duncan reports that the Saints are planning to share the field for joint practices with the San Francisco 49ers before an upcoming preseason game.
It makes a lot of sense. The Saints will be moving their 2024 training camp to California this year amid large-scale renovations to the team’s Metairie practice facility, so they won’t have to travel far from their operations at UC-Irvine’s campus. Duncan’s report says the Saints and 49ers will play a preseason game at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. On top of the logistics involved, the Saints will have a great opportunity to see how they compare to a legitimate Super Bowl contender.
This will be their second exhibition game of the summer after kicking off the preseason with the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale’s State Farm Stadium.
Joint practices are sometimes seen as a better evaluation opportunity than the preseason games themselves; it’s an environment where coaches can control the matchups and pace of play to try out specific situations. The Saints have held joint practices with teams like the Los Angeles Chargers, Green Bay Packers, and Houston Texans in recent years, as well as the New England Patriots and Jacksonville Jaguars. So while this will be their first time working with Kyle Shanahan’s staff in San Francisco, it’s sure to be a great learning opportunity after they poached offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak from the 49ers.
