NEW ORLEANS — Carolina Panthers players can talk all they want about not blowing an opportunity. They can complain about the calls that New Orleans Saints rookie quarterback Tyler Shough got, and the ones that Panthers third-year QB Bryce Young didn’t.

They can correctly point out that their goal of winning an NFC South title still remains intact. But let’s be clear: By getting swept by the last-place Saints after an excruciating, 20-17 loss Sunday at the Caesars Superdome, the Panthers absolutely choked on a chance to grab the upper hand in a division that nobody wants to win.

By blowing a 10-point second-half lead, the Panthers (7-7) fell back into a tie for first with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and continued their confounding trend of following up big wins and good mojo with bad losses and head-scratching decisions.

As they try to snap a seven-year playoff drought, the Panthers keep making things hard on themselves. It’s their way.

“It’s the growing nature of when you’re trying to build a winning culture. It’s not gonna happen overnight. We are in a position now where we have to go make it happen overnight,” offensive lineman Austin Corbett said. “We’ve got Tampa coming in, and we’ve gotta go do it. There’s no other option. If you want to win, make it to the playoffs, host a home playoff game, it starts right now.”

Had they not given away the game against the Saints (4-10) with miscommunication in the secondary on New Orleans’ game-tying drive and a season-high 11 penalties, the Panthers could have clinched their first division crown since 2015 by beating the Bucs next weekend in Charlotte.

Instead, they lost a chance to finish with a better division record than Tampa Bay (they’re both 2-2), which is the second tiebreaker. The Panthers can still win the South by sweeping the Bucs (the two close the regular season in Tampa). If the two split, a Panthers win over Seattle coupled with a Bucs loss to Miami in Week 17 would get it done.

So, far from over. The road just became tougher.

“We didn’t let a real good opportunity slip away,” defensive lineman Derrick Brown said in responding to a question phrased as such. “We’ve still got everything in front of us. That was the easier way, to take it today and go win next week. But we still got the same stuff in front of us, so that’s what we’re gonna focus on.”

The Panthers entered as 2.5-point favorites and seemed to be in control in the fourth quarter, leading 17-10 and having driven into Saints territory. But on fourth-and-1 with 11 minutes remaining, Dave Canales passed up a 53-yard field goal attempt from Ryan Fitzgerald, who could have made it a two-score game.

Instead, Canales called a run for Chuba Hubbard, who was stopped for no gain. “I couldn’t pass up on fourth-and-inches right there,” Canales said. “I trust my guys to get that done. We’ve been really successful in those situations. The Saints beat us on that play.”

Chris Olave beat them on several plays later in the fourth quarter. Held to one catch the first 3 1/2 quarters, the Saints’ No. 1 receiver pulled in four receptions on the Saints’ 78-yard tying drive.

Olave capped the march by beating cornerback Jaycee Horn on a 12-yard touchdown on a slant route. Horn went to the Pro Bowl last season and is the leading vote-getter among corners in the fan voting this year. But he’s had trouble checking Olave, who caught a long touchdown against Horn in the Saints’ Week 10 win in Charlotte.

Horn and No. 2 corner Mike Jackson declined to speak with reporters after the game. Canales didn’t have a problem with the defensive calls when Olave took over, blaming the issues on miscommunication.

“We’re gonna have to look at the film and make sure we get to the bottom of what happened on those,” he said. “These are base calls. These are core calls that we know, that we trust the guys to execute.”

With the score tied, Young converted a third-and-10 with an 11-yard scramble on the ensuing drive. Some players questioned whether officials should have flagged Saints safety Jonas Sanker on the play. Cameron Jordan earlier shoved Young out of bounds on another unpenalized play, which prompted a retaliation by left tackle Ikem Ekwonu, who was flagged.

The Panthers were talking about those non-calls because of what happened on the Saints’ game-winning drive, when rookie safety Lathan Ransom’s hit on a sliding Shough resulted in a 15-yard penalty that set up Charlie Smyth’s 47-yard field goal.

With the Saints near midfield but out of timeouts with 12 seconds left, Shough spotted the Panthers’ prevent look, which included no interior linemen, and ran a draw up the middle for 4 yards. Ransom’s penalty tacked on another 15, plus stopped the clock with nine seconds left.

“I kind of maybe sold it a little bit because I know we didn’t have any timeouts,” said Shough, who left for a play after the hit. “So I mean, it definitely hurt, but I was good.”

Shough’s admission likely will further tick off Brown, who already didn’t like the flag. “I think it was a BS call. It’s one of those ones where he did it all day, he slid late,” said Brown, who also was penalized for a hit on Shough. “So I don’t know what they want us to do.”

“I think it should be up for discretion,” Brown added. “Not every single time he gets it, it’s like, ‘Let’s make the call.’ None of them were vicious. I just don’t understand it. But it is what it is.”

Ransom said he was trying to fight for every yard to keep the Saints from getting into field goal range. “When he’s running, I’m just thinking stop him as fast as I can,” Ransom said. “But he’s a quarterback, so I’ve gotta be aware of the situation, let him slide.”

Veteran safety Nick Scott said the Panthers were in the right look, adding that a draw is tough to defend in any situation. Scott was more bothered by the Panthers’ sloppy play following their week off. The Panthers came into Sunday as the NFL’s third-least penalized team, then threw their own Flag Day.

“We looked like we came off a bye, which is never a good thing in this league. We made a lot of mistakes that we weren’t making before and we just gotta be better,” Scott said. “Whether it’s a bye week or we played a game the week before, it requires so much of us in terms of attention, execution. And the fact of the matter is we didn’t do that at that level that was required today, and this is the result.”

So now the Panthers’ playoff path will go through two of their former quarterbacks, with two dates with the Bucs’ Baker Mayfield sandwiched around the Week 17 game against Seattle’s Sam Darnold.

The Bucs had the look of an imploding team with five losses in six games, prompting former Buc and NFL Network analyst Gerald McCoy and at least one other player to suggest things aren’t great behind the scenes in Tampa.

The Panthers had a chance to finish off the Bucs in Charlotte. But no one said ending the NFL’s second-longest active playoff drought would be easy. Not with this team.

“I don’t want it any other way,” Brown said. “From the jump it’s been about grit. This is what we do. So now we’ve gotta bounce back. We’ve gotta challenge every man as a man in here and we’ve gotta go to work next week.”