/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/25027295/453224371.0.jpg)
Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints can't win in cold weather, right? They're from the South. They play in a Dome. Ergo, they stink when the mercury drops below 35 or 32 or 25 or whatever arbitrary temperature the makers of hot sports takes have now pegged as the can't-play-cold benchmark.
"I think we kind of heard as of late was two weeks ago when we went to Seattle and that's when people starting commenting on my road record," Brees said on a Wednesday conference call with the St. Louis media. "And, I didn't even realize it at the time. I wasn't one for statistics in regards to how many games we had won at home and how many games we had won on the road.
"I just knew we had won a lot of games since we've been here."
But it wasn't all shade from Brees. He backed it up with some numbers.
"When you actually go back and look at the statistics," Brees said, "we've won more games than any other team in the NFL since '09 on the road and since 2006 when Sean Payton first got here, we're second-most in wins on the road in all kinds of different conditions whether it be cold, rain, snowing, whatever."
Let's put the numbers to the test, using the handy, dandy database from Pro Football Reference.
Since 2006, the Saints are 0-3 in regular season outdoor games where the game-time temperature was below 30 degrees. Two of those games were in Chicago. And the last one was in Week 17 of the 2009 season. The Saints have played one playoff game outdoors in temperatures below 30 degrees, in January 2007. They lost that one to the Bears.
The game-time temperature for that loss in Seattle a couple weeks ago was actually 41 degrees. So let's reset our qualifier at 45 degrees. In 12 regular season games outdoors at or below 45 degrees, the Saints are 5-7. For playoff games in those same conditions, the Saints are 0-2, including a loss in Seattle in Jan. 2011.
New Orleans is 36-26 on the road during the regular season since 2006. And that includes their disastrous 2012 season. They were 3-5 on the road last year with Sean Payton watching from a remote location while suspended.
"Obviously, we don't get a lot of that because we play down South and our division is down South," Brees said. "So, typically we're getting warm weather teams, but plenty of times we've had to go up North in November, December, January to go play and I think our record speaks for itself."
Yes, the record does speak for itself.
The Sunday forecast for St. Louis calls for a high temperature of 31 degrees in partly cloudy conditions.
Unfortunately, the Rams play in a Dome, where the visiting crowd from New Orleans will feel right at home for at least a couple hours.