Ah, the old 'dome' argument. Lame.
Drew Brees indoors, career:
Games played - 69
Completion percentage - 68%
Yards per attempt - 7.9
Touchdowns - 151
Interceptions - 73
Passer rating - 99.3
Drew Brees outdoors, career:
Games played - 90
Completion percentage - 63.7%
Yards per attempt - 7.1
Touchdowns - 144
Interceptions - 79
Passer rating - 89.4
Bear in mind that many of those outdoors games were played in San Diego, which is about as close to a dome as an open stadium can be, and still you can see a decline in performance when playing outdoors.
Let's add another example, Peyton Manning.
Peyton Manning indoors, career:
Games played - 112
Completion percentage - 65.5%
Yards per attempt - 7.8
Touchdowns - 231
Interceptions - 102
Passer rating - 98.3
Peyton Manning outdoors, career:
Games played - 101
Completion percentage - 64.4%
Yards per attempt - 7.4
Touchdowns - 179
Interceptions - 99
Passer rating - 91.7
Okay, you see a trend here. I'm not even going to cite Kurt Warner's stats, and his show an 18 point swing in Passer rating when playing indoors, as opposed to outdoors. So, this is a trend for QBs who play in domes, there's no questioning that.
Now, maybe you'll say: "yeah, but those outdoors stats were all accumulated on the road, where QBs notoriously play worse, so you can't attribute that to being unable to play on less than ideal conditions". Let's see what the stats say about that.
Drew Brees home, career:
Games played - 80
Completion percentage - 66.1%
Yards per attempt - 7.6
Touchdowns - 168
Interceptions - 78
Passer rating - 96.8
Drew Brees away, career:
Games played - 80
Completion percentage - 65.2%
Yards per attempt - 7.3
Touchdowns - 127
Interceptions - 74
Passer rating - 90.9
Now let's see what happens with Peyton Manning on the road.
Peyton Manning home, career:
Games played - 107
Completion percentage - 65.3%
Yards per attempt - 7.7
Touchdowns - 213
Interceptions - 89
Passer rating - 98.0
Peyton Manning away, career:
Games played - 106
Completion percentage - 64.6%
Yards per attempt - 7.5
Touchdowns - 197
Interceptions - 112
Passer rating - 92.1
Okay, but you could already guess Brees' and Manning' home/away splits would be pretty close to their outdoors/indoors ones. Now, to close the argument, I present you Tom Brady and Brett Favre, pretty much universally regarded as the two best cold-weather quarterbacks of all time. Let's see how they fare on the road, as opposed to at home.
Tom Brady home, career:
Games played - 83
Completion percentage - 63.8%
Yards per attempt - 7.3
Touchdowns - 142
Interceptions - 43
Passer rating - 96.6
Tom Brady away, career:
Games played - 83
Completion percentage - 64.1%
Yards per attempt - 7.7
Touchdowns - 166
Interceptions - 73
Passer rating - 96.6
Brett Favre home, career:
Games played - 135
Completion percentage - 62.1%
Yards per attempt - 7.2
Touchdowns - 242
Interceptions - 143
Passer rating - 88.3
Brett Favre away, career:
Games played - 134
Completion percentage - 61.8%
Yards per attempt - 7.1
Touchdowns - 229
Interceptions - 154
Passer rating - 85.7
As you see, these two perform almost identically at home or on the road. They also have considerably better stats indoors than outdoors, even if, in Brady's case, he has never played a home dome game. This quick study presents us reasonably strong evidence that big time quarterbacks generally perform better in domes, but those who can play at a high level in a home outdoors stadium, generally replicate the same level of performance on the road, because they are accustomed to throw in less than ideal conditions. However, dome QBs may not struggle when they have to deal with the weather, but their performance unequivocally suffers in those occasions. Therefore, it's pretty naive to think the 'dome factor' doesn't influence quarterback performance.
