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The New Orleans Saints will find out Friday night when their preseason begins.
In a normal year, when the free agent market is open for weeks and contract negotiations with players unfold at about the same pace, draft picks and veterans new to New Orleans would have had rookie camps and organized team activities to absorb the playbook and get acclimated to their surroundings.


This year, with the labor unrest finally ending on the eve of camp openings, NFL teams immediately were forced to throw a still-unsettled roster into the fire. Coaching staffs lost the luxury of evaluating players over time. Instead, the staffs enter a live game with fewer practices to prepare for a game.
"Certainly, there will be less snaps for the young players than they normally would have had in leading up to this game," Coach Sean Payton said Tuesday after practice. "That being said, as far as how we play our guys, I don't know that it will be that much different. You know, with the starters, we typically look at snaps, not quarters, because quarters can be a little deceiving, so we try to get somewhere between that 12 and 17 snap count, with exceptions for a few players."
Might one of those players be quarterback Drew Brees, the one fans probably want to see the most at the Superdome for the game against the San Francisco 49ers?
"We haven't decided yet," Payton said.
Brees isn't the sort of commodity the coaches plan to risk in extensive preseason action, but he waved aside any concerns about a lack of preparation or his own participation.
In fact, Brees said, the team hasn't begun talking about the 49ers, and anyway, "I'm sure Sean has a plan," he said.
At the same time, Brees said the compressed format has put a premium on practices.

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homerj07

Its preseason - sorry for anyone going to the game BUT...

leave Drew out!!

RockyMountainSaint

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Actually, I am looking forward to seeing how our special teams look.
Lots of emphasis has been placed on them in camp thus far.
More than I can ever recall seeing at training camp.
God knows, we need to improve there.

Mardigras9

Pre-Season will be nerve racking, hoping we can can get through it without any of these season ending injuries that are rampant throughout the league.

Choupique

They accept the risk every day. That is why they made it into the NFL.
Some folks like to scare the chit out of themselves on a regular basis.

Most humans would run from what NFL players TACKLE.

FinSaint

Wouldn't you still want him to take at least some snaps to get more accustomed to Kreutz at center?

NOS2SB

He'll probably play a quater in the first game.

papz

A couple of years late but I'm also looking forward to seeing how coverage unit in action... on punts mostly. With the new KO rules, honestly, even if we kept the same unit in together, we were going to statisically improve regardless.

I'm looking forward to seeing Chase play extended snaps.

SaintsBro

I have no proof, but I have this feeling, call it a theory, that sometimes in preseason, Drew stays in there until he gets a touchdown that they like the looks of. If he gets the touchdown right away, first drive, nice string of plays, a few first downs to get to the end zone, they're happy -- it's on with the baseball cap and out runs Chase. Wasn't it the New England preseason game last year, where they looked sloppy at first, and the first team stayed in there longer than everyone expected, then finally they drove down the field and got a score and THEN Drew came out? I think it's happened in preseason games some other times under Payton, too. I predict that Drew stays in the game, until he gets that convincing-looking Saints drive and a score; I suspect that's part of what they look for, and how they measure the offense, more than quarters or series or a certain number of snaps.

Rugby Saint II

Of all the teams out there I believe that the Saints will be better prepared.
We have more experience than most teams and we still have our heavily motivated leaders on both sides of the ball. We may be a little too loose but we'll tighten up quickly.