WHEN NEWLY APPOINTED New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore asked Chase Haslett and Terry Joseph to join his coaching staff this past spring, neither hesitated about returning to Louisiana.
Haslett, the son of former Saints coach Jim Haslett, lived in New Orleans twice -- first as a toddler when Jim was the Saints' defensive coordinator under Jim Mora in 1995-96, and then when Jim Haslett was brought back as head coach in 2000. The family moved away when Jim was fired following the 2005 season.
Joseph grew up in New Orleans. He coached at nearby Destrehan High School in the early 2000s, moved away in 2006 and, despite a brief return as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech, he has been coaching out of state since 2010.
Both returned to New Orleans this year as Saints' assistants: Joseph is the defensive pass game coordinator and Chase coaches the tight ends.
Coming back was a full circle moment for them -- considering what they had experienced decades earlier.
Twenty years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 3 storm.
It remains one of the deadliest and costliest storms to date -- causing more than $100 billion in damage in the Gulf Coast region and killing more than 1,300 people. In New Orleans, the protective levee system was breached and approximately 80% of the city was flooded.
The Saints evacuated and set up operations in San Antonio for the 2005 season and returned to play in the Superdome 13 months after the storm.
While Haslett and Joseph safely evacuated the city with their families at the time, they were among the thousands of people in the area affected. In anticipation of the 20th anniversary of Katrina, Haslett and Joseph reflected on how their lives changed after the disaster and how it led them back to New Orleans with the Saints.
"When you can look back on it and what the organization had to go through ... it's a unique situation and I think it brings people closer together," Joseph said.
"Like people say in life, sometimes you got to go through the bottom to eventually end up on the top. So, I think that's a true testament of it."
A WEEK BEFORE Hurricane Katrina's landfall, the Saints conducted a typical training camp. The team hosted a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens in the Louisiana Superdome on Aug. 26 and had decisions to make about final roster cuts.
But as Katrina intensified into a Category 5 storm in the Gulf, the team and more than 100 others -- including friends, family members and pets -- flew to California that Sunday. The idea was to wait out the storm on the West Coast ahead of their preseason finale against the Oakland Raiders on Thursday and then fly home.
However, due to the destruction, the 2005 team would never be together in New Orleans again.
The Superdome, which was being used as a shelter of last resort for thousands of people, sustained significant roof damage and was unusable. The Saints flew to San Antonio following their game as it was unsafe to return to New Orleans. Previously in 2004, the Saints had evacuated to San Antonio for three days due to the threat of Hurricane Ivan.
Haslett and his family evacuated to Pensacola, Florida, then Tallahassee, and later joined his dad and the team in Texas.
He recalled sitting in "bumper to bumper" traffic for hours before the storm hit.
"I still remember specifically the dogs and cats being left on the side of the road. People didn't want to or couldn't bring their pets with them. ...It was not a fun experience," Haslett said.
The Saints set up a home base in San Antonio and played their home games at the Alamodome and Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. An emotional win in their season opener against the Carolina Panthers landed quarterback Aaron Brooks and kicker John Carney on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but the weary Saints, who logged more than 30,000 miles in the air that fall, would win only three games that season.
"All the players reacted differently. Some could handle it, some couldn't. Some wanted to go home. I had guys that wanted to quit. They didn't want to play anymore. I mean, it was truly amazing, the things that went on," Jim Haslett said.
School was pushed to the backburner for Chase, who said his memories of that time are a blur. But there were happy moments among the uncertainty for the Hasletts.
"Usually I spent the days actually going to the facility in the Alamodome and hanging out with my dad and riding the golf carts around. They just tried to keep me entertained [as much] as possible," Chase Haslett said.
He added: "I really didn't know specifically what was going on in the city here per se, but being able to ride the golf cart around, and I used to pick up players and bring 'em from one meeting to the next and I was a little taxi for them, so I still remember that. That was fun."
Chase recalled one drive from San Antonio to New Orleans with his family, the car loaded with luggage piled on top of it. Along the way the container opened, scattering clothes on the highway.
"Cars were flying by and my mom's out there trying to pick up shoes off the side of the road," he recalled.
As they drove into New Orleans, tanks lined the road. The Haslett's garage door was blown down the street, fences were knocked over and windows were broken.
"It felt like a freaking war scene to some extent," Chase said.
But they considered themselves lucky -- the house was still standing.
Eventually, life became a new normal. The Hasletts returned to New Orleans, and Chase went to school on Saturdays to make up for missed time, while the Saints finished the season 3-13.
Jim Haslett, who led the team to its first playoff win five years earlier, was fired after the season. He took a job as the St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator, and Chase would enter high school in Missouri instead of in New Orleans as originally planned.
"It was hard, and I made mistakes, and I wasn't really sure what I was getting into. The worst part of the whole thing is I had a chance to come back. I think it was on a one year contract and I didn't want to do it. I wanted more and they didn't want to do that, and then I just said, forget it. Probably a mistake," Jim said. "We were a good enough team. Once we got back home, we could have put it back together and would've been all right but probably made the wrong choice."
As the memories faded, Chase and Jim were able to make light of some of it, with Chase teasing Jim about his 45-51 record in New Orleans.
"I always bring up his head coaching record here and he'll say, 'You can't count that. That last year doesn't count!' Well you played football games," Chase said.
When asked what his life might have looked like without the storm, Chase pondered scenarios.
What if the 2005 season had been a success without the storm? What if his dad had kept his job?
"That's an interesting question," Chase said. "But you look at it, Sean Payton had a fricking hell of a run here. ... And you think about what would happen if my dad was around a couple of years. Would they have won? I mean, maybe Drew Brees wouldn't have been here, and the narrative would've been completely different within the organization."
AS THE HASLETTS were making plans to evacuate with the Saints, the 31-year-old Joseph and his family were staring down the realities of what an evacuation actually meant. Joseph, a lifelong New Orleanian, had never evacuated for a storm.
To him, hurricanes meant family coming together for hurricane gatherings to share resources in the event of a power outage -- not fleeing.
But when he came home from practice on Aug. 27, his wife had everything packed, reminding him of the practicalities of having young children in a house without power. So they headed north to Ruston, Louisiana, figuring they would be back in a few days.
A four-hour drive took almost 13, and the Josephs were stuck in Ruston for more than two weeks, watching everything play out on TV without any way to contact their family due to power outages and weak phone signals.
"You're hearing about the horrific scene in the Superdome," Joseph said. "And then the toughest thing: Cellphones were not as sophisticated. So the signal was very, very bleak. And so you lost contact with a lot of people."
While Destrehan, a 30-minute drive from New Orleans, resumed playing football within weeks of the storm, Joseph returned to one of the most chaotic coaching situations of his life. Games were canceled and rescheduled as needed, sometimes played in the afternoons due to damaged stadium lights or even on a Monday when Hurricane Rita formed a few weeks after Katrina.
That season was a precursor to the college transfer portal, Joseph said. Some players moved away and never came back, others transferred because their school was no longer viable that fall.
Some kids transferred without the ability to obtain transcripts. One player, Joseph recalled, played for three teams in three weeks -- evacuating to Houston and playing there, transferring to Destrehan and then changing schools the next week.
"So it was like a whole different deal that you can almost put together a new team on a week-to-week basis, and then maybe six weeks later, your best player, his dad's job is back and running, so he's back now, but he's not in football shape," Joseph said. "So it's just a really unique thing. And to me, it was kind of similar to the pandemic. There was no playbook on how to really handle it. You just dealt with the new issues as they came along."
Joseph, who was also a former professional baseball player, might have spent his life in the high school coaching ranks if not for the storm. That day unknowingly set him on his path to coaching in the college and NFL ranks.
Because of the scarcity of housing in the New Orleans region, Joseph was able to sell their undamaged house in a matter of hours. The money from that sale allowed him to take a lower-paying job at LSU in the spring.
"I made my teaching salary and profit from the house that afforded me the opportunity to take the pay cut and become a GA [graduate assistant] at LSU. It gave me the opportunity to move to the college level, and then luckily for me, that next season, Coach [Derek] Dooley hired me at Louisiana Tech ...
"Being from New Orleans, everybody for the most part lives paycheck to paycheck. So to say, 'Hey, I'm going to take this big pay cut to chase my dream with two small kids, that would've probably been a lot harder decision.'"
WHEN CHASE WALKS around the Saints facility these days, it almost feels like he's going back in time.
Outside of the walls of the team buildings, there are tangible reminders of Katrina's devastation. Empty lots remain where houses stood. Some restaurants are permanently marked with waterlines from the floods, and a few houses still memorialize the symbols left by search and rescue teams.
In New Orleans, which sits below sea level, thoughts of past and future storms are never far away.
But when he goes to work, he sees reminders of the kid he was before the storm.
"A little bit of a full-circle moment," Chase said. "Little déjà vu moments every now and then."
Former #Saints head coach Jim Haslett visited Tuesday's practice, his son Chase is on the coaching staff 🏈 pic.twitter.com/289zY3tlSD
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) August 20, 2025
Now Chase brings his son to work, pointing out old photos of his father on the walls.
"This is his jungle gym now. It reminds me of the times I used to come here and run around with my dad," Chase said. "... When I pick up my son, he's like, 'Let's find papa.' And so we look at all the pictures and when he finds him, he's like, 'Oh papa!'"
Chase said his parents now tell him "it's your time."
"I'm proud of him," Jim said. "The guy went through all that stuff and then came back to really where it all started for him. I mean, it's kind of amazing."
Chase dreams of a day where he can see his dad and son in the stands together for a playoff game. His dad recently showed up to a practice in the Superdome, watching from the sidelines where he once coached.
If there was a lesson Chase learned from the storm, it was about the healing power of time.
"We'll always bounce back, no matter the circumstance," Chase said. "That was the lowest of lows, but the city's gone up since then, so we'll always bounce back. That's one of the things you can take from it."