METAIRIE, La. -- Long before 2020 forced the sports world to deal with so many unprecedented wrinkles, there was the plight of the 2005 New Orleans Saints.
"We were literally the Bad News Bears of the NFL," wide receiver Lance Moore said of a vagabond team that had to evacuate New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina and then spend the year bouncing around various practice locations in San Antonio while playing "home" games in three different cities.
"'Unique' probably doesn't do it justice," said running back Deuce McAllister, a Mississippi native who stressed how much the "uncertainty and the unknown" of the Saints' long-term future weighed on him and others when it was unclear if the team would ever return to the Gulf South or might permanently relocate.