On August 26, 2006—nineteen years ago today—the New Orleans Saints played the Indianapolis Colts in a steamy preseason showcase at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson. The scoreboard said Colts 27, Saints 14. The night itself said something bigger: it was the beginning of a new era for the New Orleans Saints, and they were doing it in Mississippi.
A fresh start in the heat
That summer, everything about the franchise felt new. Sean Payton had just been hired. Drew Brees had just arrived. In the shadow of Katrina’s long aftermath, Payton intentionally moved camp two hours north to Millsaps College—dorm keys around necks, two-a-days in punishing heat, and minimal distractions—because he wanted a hard reset and a tight locker room. He later called that first camp “difficult,” the kind of old-school environment he preferred, and the organization has since described 2006 at Millsaps as one of the most brutal camps anyone around the team had witnessed.
The plan was deliberate: stay in Jackson through the third preseason game against the Colts, then break camp and head home to get ready for a Superdome reopening the entire football world was watching. Mississippi wasn’t just a training site; it was the crucible where a new identity was forged.
(Harper-Davis Field at Millsaps College, where the Saints held training camp from 2006-2008. Some could say the 2009 Super Bowl winning Saints team was built in Jackson.)
Game night in Jackson
Two hours from New Orleans, the Colts brought Peyton Manning and a future championship roster to Jackson’s big concrete bowl. Nearly 60,000 filed in despite traffic snarls and long lines; the atmosphere felt part pep rally, part stress test for the new-look Saints. The result—Colts 27, Saints 14—mattered less than the reps for a roster being re-cast around Sean Payton and Drew Brees, plus rookies like Reggie Bush and a seventh-round revelation named Marques Colston. Mississippi got the first full-dress look at the rebuild.
Two weeks later: the night the Dome breathed again
What began in Jackson erupted into a civic catharsis on September 25, 2006, when the Saints returned to a repaired and roaring Superdome for Monday Night Football against Atlanta. The pregame stage—U2 and Green Day performing “The Saints Are Coming,” Irma Thomas singing the anthem—gave way to the single most iconic play in franchise history: Steve Gleason’s blocked punt, recovered in the end zone by Curtis Deloatch. The Saints won 23–3, but the score only hints at what that night meant to New Orleans. It was a communal exhale, a declaration of return, and it has been immortalized with the “Rebirth” statue outside the Dome.
Camp in Jackson hardened the roster and clarified roles; the preseason date with the Colts offered a measuring stick; the Superdome homecoming proved the team’s identity under the brightest lights. The Saints rode that foundation to a 10–6 breakthrough and the NFC Championship Game that very season—and, three and a half years later, to the franchise’s first Lombardi Trophy, beating those same Colts 31–17 in Super Bowl XLIV. The arc from Jackson’s August heat to February confetti was no accident.
Nineteen years on
Anniversaries invite easy nostalgia, but this one earns it. August 26, 2006 is more than a preseason date; it’s the day Mississippi hosted the first public chapter of the Payton–Brees era, the day the work done at Millsaps stepped into the lights. Less than a month later, the nation saw what was taking shape. The Saints’ renaissance gets remembered in bronze outside the Superdome and is forever etched in steel on the Lombardi Trophy, but its steel was forged up the road in Jackson at tiny Millsaps College during a hot July and August in 2006.
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