The New Orleans Saints will “host” the Green Bay Packers at Jacksonville’s TIAA Bank Field on Sunday, Sept. 12, while the city of New Orleans continues to recover from Hurricane Ida.
The NFL announced Jacksonville as the alternate site for the game, which will still kick off at 4:25 p.m. ET as originally scheduled.
The Saints had shown interest in playing the game in Dallas, where they have set up temporary operations after evacuating New Orleans last week. But the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium was unavailable because of a concert scheduled in the venue later that week.
The NFL prefers that all games be played in NFL stadiums because of the replay requirements and other logistical concerns. But Saints general manager Mickey Loomis said the league always identifies potential locations that could be available each week in case circumstances like these arise.
The Saints’ Week 2 and Week 3 games are on the road at Carolina and at New England, respectively. Ideally the Saints could return home to the Caesars Superdome after that.
The Superdome did not sustain significant damage. But widespread power outages throughout the New Orleans area would make it difficult to host a game by next week, in addition to staffing and security issues.
Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst said Wednesday that the Packers didn’t have any input in the decision for the game to be played in Jacksonville.
“I don’t think we had a whole lot of say given than it was New Orleans’ home game,” Gutekunst said. “We would’ve loved to have it here [at Lambeau Field], though; that would’ve been nice.”
ESPN’s Rob Demovsky contributed to this report.
