Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak and New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton have decided to cancel their teams' practices at Methodist Training Center that would have preceded their NFL preseason matchup on August 20. The two teams typically schedule practices in the same location before playing one another in the preseason.
Texans, Saints Cancel Annual Combined Preseason Practices
The reasons for the cancellations arise from concerns about the NFL Lockout.
“Sean and I really wanted to do it, but we’ve got so much to make up, we thought it would be better to not do it this year and pick it back up next year,” Kubiak said. “It was a mutual decision.”
With the lockout now heading into mid-July, it’s unclear how much of training camp teams will miss, if any, and whether any preseason games will need to be cancelled. Preseason games are quite lucrative, so the owners should have plenty of motivation to complete a deal, but so far that hasn’t happened. And even if the lockout ends within, say, a week, the NFL free-agency period should be wild, and training camps probably will too. It makes sense that Kubiak and Payton would want to keep their practice schedules as simple as possible.
For more on the Texans, check out Battle Red Blog. For more on the Saints, check out Canal Street Chronicles.
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