By CJ Carlson
The New Orleans Saints were hoping to get into a joint practice this week against the tough San Francisco 49ers, but that isn’t going to be happening. The 49ers had requested to cancel the scheduled joint practices with the Saints because they are dealing with numerous injuries across the roster. San Francisco stated that these injuries would have negatively impacted how the joint sessions went for both sides.
It’s worth noting that the Saints and 49ers are going to be competing against one another in a preseason game on Sunday. New Orleans head coach Dennis Allen said, “Kyle reached out to me yesterday, making me aware that they’ve got some things going on there in terms of having enough able bodies to have some good practices.
I really haven’t thought about how that will affect what we do. Obviously, we’re going to be practicing against ourselves for the next four days. I think we’ll probably take some of that planned work that we had against the 49ers, and we take the skeleton of that and just utilize that to work against ourselves.”
Allen later mentioned that he likes the joint practices that the team can have but knows that these being canceled isn’t the end of the world. As for some of the other players on the roster, they were less than thrilled to hear that there wouldn’t be any joint practices for them to get some simulation reps. Defensive end Card Granderson said, “I’m very disappointed. I love competing, that’s what camp is all about, to compete against other people.”
New Orleans Saints Could Also Benefit From The Cancellation
The lack of joint practice might help the Saints at the end of the day also. It allows their players to rest up before this weekend’s contest. Quarterback Spencer Rattler missed practice on Sunday due to a thigh contusion, so he’ll gladly take a day to rest and heal up. Outside of Rattler, the team is just now getting back Bub Means from his hamstring injury and is still without Equanimeous St. Brown and Rashid Shaheed.
You never want to miss out on simulation reps against top-tier teams in the league, but then again, there’s always a silver lining. This cancellation could allow the Saints to get a little healthier and surprise the 49ers when they compete in this second preseason game. Perhaps it’ll be a better showing from the first-team offense than what we saw in the last preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals.