NFL outfit New Orleans Saints are among those displaced by
Hurricane Ida as the team went back to work on Monday about 500 miles away in
the stadium of another NFL team.

The team is working under coach Sean Payton in the home
field of the Dallas Cowboys. The players will practice at AT&T Stadium through
Wednesday before a previously planned break leading into the start of the
regular season.

“Then we are going through a ton of contingency plans,”
Payton said.

All the Saints players and staff relocated to North
Texas along with about 120 family members on Saturday, when their final
preseason game was cancelled a day before the destructive category 4 hurricane
made landfall south of New Orleans and left that entire area without power.

“Left behind are obviously apartments, condominiums, homes.
Those are all physical things. Nonetheless, they’re still home for so many
people. I think to some degree that going out and being able to practice today
is going to be good for everyone, because from afar, there’s only so much you
can do,” AP quoted Payton as saying.

Payton said that it would be unrealistic to believe that
they would be at their headquarters in Metairie, Louisiana when they begin
practice next Monday even though initial reports from people there indicated
that the facility handled the storm overall pretty well.

“There will be an important time for everyone to kind of
assess where they’re at. And there’s a good chance when we start up (next)
Monday … that’s going to be somewhere other than Metairie,” he said.

There has been no word yet about the scheduled September 12 season opener at home against the Green Bay Packers that is supposed to be at
the Superdome.

(With AP input)