Saints to host Buffalo Bills for Thanksgiving, per report

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The Saints will play at least one game in prime time in 2021, and on one of the biggest stages in sports. Bleacher Report’s Master Tesfatsion reports that New Orleans will host the rowdy Buffalo Bills on Thanksgiving Day, completing the NFL’s three-game series for the national holiday.

Tesfatsion previously reported that the Detroit Lions will face the Chicago Bears while the Dallas Cowboys are playing the Las Vegas Raiders on Thanksgiving. Detroit and Dallas traditionally slot in for the early and late afternoon time slots, so it’s a reasonable guess to expect the Saints and Bills to play that evening.

This would be the fourth game the Saints play on Thanksgiving in franchise history, and their third Thanksgiving kickoff in the last four years — they’ve beaten the Atlanta Falcons twice, back to back in 2018 and 2019, before receiving a Christmas Day feature against the Minnesota Vikings in 2020 (which they also won). The Saints are undefeated on Thanksgiving going into 2021.

But the Bills are a heck of a matchup. They’ve surrounded fiery young quarterback Josh Allen with weapons that would envy any team around the league, including former Saints slot receiver Emmanuel Sanders — who joins an infamous Saints-killer in Stefon Diggs for Buffalo. The Bills made it all the way to last year’s AFC Championship Game and are hoping to compete for a Super Bowl. If they’re going to go the distance, they’ll have a big hurdle in New Orleans to overcome first.

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