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NEW Orleans Saints players were sent home from practice early on Wednesday as Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana.
With the Category 2 storm making its way through the state, city officials called for roads to be cleared.
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Players left the facility before 2pm, although head coach Dennis Allen confirmed that he and his staff would stay overnight.
“We’ll stay here this evening,” the 51-year-old said. “We’ll probably find a corner of the room to lay down in at some point in time and get a little bit of sleep.
“Because I think the most significant weather is gonna be this evening into the early morning hours.
“That’s kind of when we would be trying to wrap up. I don’t see anyone trying to get out of here in that type of weather.”
Hurricane Francine left hundreds of thousands of homes across Louisiana without power on Wednesday night.
Conditions eased as the evening went on, however, with Francine being downgraded to a “tropical storm”.
“On the forecast track, the center of Francine will move over central and northern portions of Mississippi through early Friday,” the National Hurricane Center said of the storm.
“Continued weakening is forecast, and Francine is expected to become a tropical depression this morning and degenerate to a post-tropical cyclone today.”
Saints linebacker Demario Davis revealed yesterday that he and his teammates had prayed for everyone’s safety.
“We were praying not just over ourselves,” he began. “But our city and the surrounding areas through this storm.
“When you think about storms that continuously hit this area, it becomes kind of like a Sunday, where you can have all the predictions in the world but it’s still unknown as to what’s going to take place…
“You just never know, so I hope everybody’s safe, everybody’s hunkered down.
“Those that were able to get away, you’re still in my prayers, as well.”
Allen went on to add, “There’s a lot of things that you take into consideration when you’re doing this.
‘MIGHT BE AT RISK’
“We felt like, obviously in this situation, we felt like we were going to be able to do our work and make sure we keep everybody safe, make sure that everybody’s family is safe.
“And be able to do that and stay here. When it was Ida a few years ago, it was one of those where we didn’t feel like we were going to be able to get our stuff done. We felt like people might be at risk.
“So we took basically the whole football operation, and families and everybody, and we went to Texas.”
The Saints were forced to evacuate amid Hurricane Ida back in August 2021.
At the time they temporarily moved their operations to Texas – and their NFL home opener was played in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Saints are back in action this Sunday, when they take on the Dallas Cowboys on the road.
