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The New Orleans Saints hit the road again this week and the Who Dat Nation will close its collective eyes, rub its gris-gris and hope for the best.

All NFL teams play better at home than on the road, but the Saints might be the most Jekyll-and-Hyde of the bunch.

One Monday they're getting pummeled by the Seahawks. Six days later they're pounding the Panthers. They fail to score more than two touchdowns at New York, Atlanta and Seattle, then come home and score three touchdowns in one quarter against the NFL's top-ranked defense at the Superdome on Sunday night.

To the Saints, venue is everything. But why? How can a team's execution be affected so dramatically just by changing stadiums? What gives?

Often, it's a team's hearing.

Crowd noise, Saints right tackle Zach Strief said, "is more of a factor than anything else."

Wind, rain and wintry weather can wreck havoc with the synchronicity of the Saints' high-powered passing attack. Familiarity -- or lack thereof -- with a stadium's lighting and playing surface also comes into play. And there's something to be said about the comfort of sleeping in your own bed and dressing at your regular locker.

But nothing disrupts a team's execution like a disruptive, unruly crowd.

The Saints are particularly vulnerable because of their sophisticated offensive system, said Trent Dilfer, a former NFL quarterback and ESPN analyst.

More than most teams, the Saints lean on cerebral quarterback Drew Brees to change plays at the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped. In the Saints' offense, Brees often will call two plays in the huddle and then designate through audibles which one to run after he surveys the defensive alignment. The idea is to run the most potentially successful play possible.

This works fine in the Superdome, when the home crowd is on its best behavior. But on the road, the "kill system," as its known in football parlance, isn't nearly as useful.

"(The Saints) control the tempo offensively at home," Dilfer said earlier this week. "... When you get to the line of scrimmage (in the kill system) you have to communicate a lot of stuff. At home they can do that easily, and it's seamless how they operate. Then they go on the road, they're trying to implement their kill system in an arena where you can't communicate."

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