Could Hurricane Francine impact Dallas Cowboys’ week 2 game against New Orleans Saints?

Approaching Sunday’s home opener for the Dallas Cowboys against the New Orleans Saints, Hurricane Francine — a Category 2 storm that made landfall on the Louisiana coast on Wednesday — has impacted the game preparation for the Saints.

The team asked players and personnel to leave the team facility in Metairie, La., early on Wednesday, heeding to the calls by city officials to clear the roads by mid-afternoon in anticipation of the storm’s landfall in the early evening.

“We’ll stay here this evening,” Saints head coach Dennis Allen said on Wednesday. “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.”

Flooding in the area has impacted multiple parishes along the Louisiana coast, including Jefferson Parish where a large number of players and team personnel reside. Following a shelter-in-place order by the city of New Orleans, the Saints pushed back their practice session on Thursday.

With the Saints playing in Arlington on Sunday, the only concern is the team’s travel on Saturday out of Louisiana. If flooding is still impacting flights and travel, the league could look at alternate solutions to play this weekend’s game.

Similar situations arose in 2020 and in 2021 when Hurricane Zeta and Hurricane Ida, respectively, forced some flexibility from the Saints. In 2020, coaches remained in the facility – similar to Wednesday – and operated off generator power. In 2021, the Category 4 storm forced the Saints to move their home opener against the Green Bay Packers to Jacksonville, Fla., in the days following the storm’s impact.

The last hurricane-impacted regular season contest saw 2017’s Miami-Tampa Bay matchup moved from Sept. 10 to Nov. 19 as a result of Hurricane Harvey. That same year, the Cowboys’ preseason game with the Houston Texans was canceled as a result of Hurricane Harvey, despite that game being played in Arlington.