Jaguars Open Preseason at New Orleans After Joint Practices With the Saints

The Jacksonville Jaguars open their 2026 preseason Saturday afternoon at the New Orleans Saints, closing out a week that began with joint practices between the two teams and that gave the Jaguars coaching staff its first extended look at the roster against outside competition.

Jacksonville held joint practices with New Orleans on Thursday, August 13, ahead of Saturday's 4 p.m. kickoff. It is the first of three preseason games and the first of three joint-practice weeks, with the Carolina Panthers scheduled for a joint session Wednesday, August 19 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beginning joint work Tuesday, August 25.

Camp opened for veterans on July 28, with rookies and quarterbacks reporting July 25 and the first practice held July 29. Practices run through August 26 at the Miller Electric Center, the team facility directly adjacent to EverBank Stadium, and fans have needed a valid mobile ticket to attend.

The joint practice structure

Jacksonville's decision to hold joint practices with all three preseason opponents is notable. Many NFL teams schedule one or two; scheduling three means the Jaguars have structured their entire August around controlled work against unfamiliar defenses and offenses rather than around the games themselves.

The logic is straightforward. Joint practices allow coaching staffs to script every situation they want to evaluate, to control snap counts precisely and to give starters meaningful reps against players they have not been lining up against for three weeks, all without the injury exposure of live game tackling.

The tradeoff is that joint practices are largely closed to public scrutiny and produce no box score. Coaching staffs get better information; fans and analysts get less. That is a tradeoff most staffs are happy to make in August.

The sequencing also matters. Practicing with New Orleans on Thursday and playing them Saturday means the Jaguars saw the same personnel twice in three days, which produces sharper evaluation than either session would alone.

What Jacksonville is trying to establish

The Jaguars enter 2026 needing to convert recent draft investment into consistent production. High picks create expectations, and the organization's competitive position depends on whether those players develop into the core of a contending roster or whether the rebuild extends further.

Travis Hunter's usage is among the specific questions camp is meant to resolve. A player who competes on both sides of the ball presents a snap-count and conditioning problem that no standard NFL roster plan accounts for, and how a coaching staff distributes those reps across offense, defense and special teams is a genuine strategic decision rather than a formality.

Preseason games offer limited insight into that question, because the players around a two-way contributor in August are not the players who will be there in October. Joint practices, where starters work against starters, produce more relevant information.

The rest of the roster follows the standard August pattern. Jacksonville carries 90 players into camp and must reduce to the regular-season limit, and the majority of preseason snaps go to the players competing for those final spots.

The rest of the preseason slate

After Saturday at New Orleans, Jacksonville hosts the Carolina Panthers at EverBank Stadium on Friday, August 21 at 7:30 p.m., preceded by joint practices on Wednesday, August 19. Preseason week two is typically when starters see their most extended game action of August.

The preseason closes Friday, August 28 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at EverBank Stadium, with joint practices between the teams beginning Tuesday, August 25. That week doubles as an in-state matchup and as the last evaluation window before final roster reductions.

Practices at the Miller Electric Center run through August 26, meaning the training camp period and the preseason game schedule overlap almost entirely rather than proceeding in sequence. That compression is standard in the current NFL calendar and is one reason joint practices have grown in importance.

Florida's NFL weekend

Jacksonville's opener comes a day after the state's other two NFL teams played theirs. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the New York Jets 24-16 at MetLife Stadium behind undrafted rookies Ayden Garnes and Jalon Daniels, with the starters held out entirely.

The Miami Dolphins lost 20-7 to the Washington Commanders, though quarterback Malik Willis led a 14-play, 93-yard touchdown drive in the first extended look at Miami's offense under new head coach Jeff Hafley. Commanders quarterback Marcus Mariota was injured in the game.

All three Florida franchises are in different phases. Miami is in year one of a coaching change and a philosophical shift on offense. Tampa Bay is managing an established core. Jacksonville is trying to establish one. The August results tell almost nothing about how those situations resolve.

EverBank Stadium and the Jacksonville context

The Jaguars are playing through a period of significant stadium work in Jacksonville, part of a long-term agreement that ties the franchise's future to the city. Stadium renovation projects of that scale reshape game-day operations and, over time, the economics of the franchise's relationship with the region.

Jacksonville's NFL market is the smallest in Florida by metropolitan population and has historically been the most sensitive to on-field performance in attendance terms. A competitive season affects the organization's business position more directly than it does for franchises in larger markets.

Northeast Florida's football calendar also includes Florida State's decision to hold camp practices at the University of North Florida this month, an unusual concentration of high-level football activity in the region during August.

What the NFL calendar looks like in August

The league's offseason program runs from spring workouts through minicamp, then breaks before training camp opens in late July. Camp compresses installation, conditioning and evaluation into roughly four weeks, overlapping with a three-game preseason schedule.

Rules limit what teams can do. Padded practices are capped, contact is restricted in defined periods, and the collective bargaining agreement governs practice length and frequency. Those limits, adopted to reduce injury exposure, mean staffs have less live work available than earlier eras allowed.

The reduction in preseason games from four to three compressed the schedule further. Teams that previously had four evaluation opportunities now have three, which increased the value of joint practices as a substitute and explains why their use has expanded across the league.

Roster reduction to 53 players follows the final preseason game, with waiver claims and practice squad signings occurring in the days after. That week produces substantial player movement across the league as teams sort through players released by other organizations.

Jacksonville's market and its stadium

The Jaguars operate in the smallest NFL market in Florida and among the smaller markets in the league. That position shapes the franchise's revenue model, its stadium arrangements and its relationship with the city of Jacksonville.

Stadium investment has been the central item in that relationship. The agreement covering renovations to EverBank Stadium involves substantial public and private funding and ties the franchise to Jacksonville over a long horizon, which resolved a question that had periodically surfaced about the team's location.

Construction work affects game day operations during the renovation period, and the franchise has managed capacity and configuration changes accordingly. Fans attending games during this period encounter a venue in transition.

Northeast Florida's football culture extends well beyond the Jaguars. The region hosts the annual Florida-Georgia game, the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, substantial high school football activity and, this August, Florida State's camp practices at the University of North Florida facilities.

Roster versatility as a strategy

Players who contribute in multiple roles have become more valuable as roster limits stayed fixed while offensive and defensive scheme complexity increased. A defensive back who can play outside corner, nickel and safety allows a team to carry fewer defensive backs and more depth elsewhere.

Two-way participation takes that logic to its limit and introduces problems no roster model handles cleanly. Snap counts, conditioning, meeting time and injury exposure all scale differently for a player working on both sides of the ball, and no established template exists for managing it across a full season.

Coaching staffs approaching that question have generally landed on defining a primary role and treating the secondary role as situational, which preserves the player's availability while capturing some of the value. How Jacksonville resolves it is among the more interesting personnel questions in the league this year.

Special teams participation is the third dimension. A player contributing on offense, defense and kicking units accumulates snap counts that exceed what most players handle, and staffs manage that total rather than any individual component.

What preseason results are worth

League-wide analysis has consistently found essentially no relationship between preseason record and regular season performance. Teams have gone undefeated in August and missed the playoffs, and teams have lost every preseason game and reached the postseason.

The reason is straightforward. Preseason games are played largely by players who will not be on the roster, under vanilla play calling designed to avoid revealing scheme, with starters held out or limited. The sample measures something other than team quality.

What the games do produce is injury information and roster clarity, both of which matter enormously. A team that emerges from August healthy and with its depth chart settled is better positioned than one that does not, regardless of the exhibition record.

What's next

Saturday's game at New Orleans kicks off at 4 p.m. and is the first public look at the 2026 Jaguars in game conditions. Starters are expected to see limited action, as is standard for preseason week one across the league.

The Carolina game on August 21 at EverBank Stadium will offer more. Preseason week two is where most NFL coaching staffs give their projected starters extended work, and it is the game that produces the most usable evaluation footage of the exhibition schedule.

Final roster reductions follow the August 28 preseason finale against Tampa Bay. Between now and then, the questions that matter for Jacksonville are health, the resolution of position competitions and how the staff plans to deploy its most versatile players when games start counting in September.