SmashMouth

Though NFL players and coaches this week learned on what days and at what times they’d meet their 2014 opponents with the release of the league’s schedule, there’s a lengthy preseason process they’d be unwise to overlook.

The May 8-10 draft, organized team activities, minicamps, training camps and preseason games all stand in the way of the first kickoff of Week 1.

But even Saints quarterback Drew Brees and inside linebacker Curtis Lofton — two of the players most responsible for keeping New Orleans’ locker-room focused on short-term priorities — couldn’t resist casting a glance at what’s in store several months down the road.

Judging from their remarks on national interviews, a regular-season opener in Atlanta as well as a trio of road prime-time games in Dallas, Carolina and at Chicago that were most conspicuous to them.

“We know it’s starting off with a bang,” Brees said to ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd on Thursday, noting that the opener in Atlanta was one of three away games the Saints will play in the first four weeks. “We’re going to find out a lot about ourselves … having to go on the road and win some tough games.”

Thus Brees renewed the time-honored question of whether the Saints are afflicted by any “road woes” when they travel away from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Perhaps the most meticulously chronicled storyline during last season was how the Saints, after winning their first two away games, dropped five of the next six as visitors before making the playoffs as a wild card.

They silenced detractors — at least temporarily — by beating the Eagles in Philadelphia in frigid temperatures, claiming the first road playoff win in Saints history in conditions many doubted New Orleans could handle.

But then they were eliminated in rainy, windy weather at Seattle, which went on to win the Super Bowl.

The Saints’ road doldrums — perceived or real — will almost certainly be a dominant storyline early this season. They’ll visit Atlanta, Cleveland and Dallas during Weeks 1 and 4; and they’ll travel for a fourth time to Detroit in Week 7 after the off week.

Though none of those teams managed to win more than half of their games in 2013, Brees in his conversation with Cowherd singled out Atlanta and Dallas as especially challenging.

Nine of the past 12 games between the Saints and the NFC South rival Falcons have been decided by eight points or fewer. While New Orleans is 13-3 against the Falcons — and 6-2 in Atlanta — since Brees became a Saint in 2006, very few of those victories have been easy.

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