Saints considering playing home games in Baton Rouge to get fans in the stands

The New Orleans Saints might play some home games in Baton Rouge.

The New Orleans Saints didn’t have their usual Superdome home-field advantage when they took down Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday Night Football.

Now, the franchise is going to look at any and every possible avenue possible to play games in front of fans, even if it means leaving New Orleans for a college stadium an hour and a half up I-10.

Adam Schefter is reporting that the Saints are currently meeting with LSU officials and discussing the possibility of playing home games at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. The main reason they want to go forward with this plan is frustration with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell refusing to allow the Saints to have fans in the stands amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Saints, who started the year 3-2, want to get fans in the stands

Since the pandemic started, Louisiana has had around 172,000 total cases, and they currently have just under 9,500 active cases. While several NFL teams have already moved ahead with plans to welcome fans back to the stadium, most notably the Dallas Cowboys allowing in excess of 21,000 into AT&T Stadium, the city of New Orleans wants to be overly cautious in this scenario.

With LSU having stopped wellness checks at the stadium and forcing the fans to self-diagnose themselves before attending a game, they don’t exactly have the most ironclad protocols with regards to keeping fans safe and healthy.

While this could be a bluff in order to strong-arm local politicians into letting fans into the stands, the fact the Saints are even willing to go down this road amid all the spikes in coronavirus cases in the state of Louisiana comes across as incredibly backwords.