How to Watch: Saints at Packers in NFL Preseason

After two days of joint practices on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Green Bay Packers will host the New Orleans Saints on Friday night.
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers will host the New Orleans Saints at 7 p.m. Friday in an NFL preseason matchup.

Here’s what you need to know.

Packers by 3

Records: As if it matters, both teams are 0-1. Green Bay lost 28-21 at San Francisco while New Orleans lost 17-13 at Houston.

Worthless history: The Packers are 7-2 all-time vs. the Saints in preseason.

The line: The Packers are 3-point favorites at FanDuel Sportsbook with a total of 39.5 points.

How to Watch Saints at Packers

Live TV: The game will air on the Packers TV Network, with Kevin Harlan and John Kuhn on the call. The network consists of WTMJ-TV, Milwaukee; WGBA-TV, Green Bay; WQOW/ABC, Eau Claire, Wis.; WXOW/ABC, La Crosse, Wis.; WKOW/ABC, Madison, Wis.; WAOW/ABC, Wausau, Wis.; KQDS/FOX, Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wis.; WLUC-NBC/FOX UP, Escanaba/Marquette, Mich.; WMBD/CBS, Peoria/Bloomington, Ill.; KCCI/CBS, Des Moines, Iowa; KWWL/NBC, Cedar Rapids/Waterloo, Iowa; KTVI/FOX, St. Louis, Mo.; KETV/ABC, Omaha, Neb.; KNDB/BEK, Bismarck, N.D.; KRDK/BEK, Fargo, N.D.; KNDM/BEK, Minot, N.D.; KDLT/NBC, Sioux Falls, S.D.; KYUR/ABC, Anchorage, Alaska; KATN/ABC, Fairbanks, Alaska and KJUD/ABC, Juneau, Alaska.

NFL Network: Next week’s game at Kansas City will be aired live by NFL Network. This game will not be televised live nationally. NFL Network will show it on tape at midnight and 10 a.m. Saturday, though.

Radio: The call of Wayne Larrivee and Larry McCarren can be heard on the Packers Radio Network. There’s a new flagship station, with WRNW-FM 97.3 in Milwaukee replacing WTMJ. Click here for the list of affiliates.

The Lineups

The Packers held 33 players out of the San Francisco game and might do something similar this week with the starers getting so many practice reps against New Orleans’ starters.

“I think the good thing about playing Dennis (Allen) and his squad is we saw a lot of different looks on defense,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said after Tuesday’s practice. “We saw pressures, edge pressure, we saw combo pressure, we saw Mike pressure. We saw a number of different defenses: one high, two high, quarters. So, we saw a lot of good stuff, and that’s important. Sometimes, we’ve had teams that have been very vanilla here in the past, not showing a lot, but I’m glad they played a lot of different defenses and played some man at one point. So, it was good work for us. Obviously, there’s no tackling in this. That’s the only difference, I think, between the preseason and today’s practice.”

With Rodgers presumably not playing, Jordan Love and Danny Etling will handle the quarterbacking duties. Love threw three interceptions in the loss to San Francisco but Rodgers chalked those up to mistakes by other players.

“I thought he did some really good things,” Rodgers said. “Drop-pick (by Tyler Davis), kind of not a great route, not great finish by Romeo (Doubs) on the one that becomes a bogus pick, and then bad decision but a terrible route inside (by Amari Rodgers). We should have been smoking down the seam and had a chance on a touchdown, instead we’re in a tight spot with the pocket collapsing throwing a contested ball on a guy who’s running the wrong route. It might look bad on the stat sheet with the three picks, but the film tells a different story.”


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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.