CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When it was over, after Matthew Stafford had added another chapter to his Hall of Fame career, Jaycee Horn walked across the field to the far tunnel at Bank of America Stadium with a towel draped over his head.

The Carolina Panthers’ Pro Bowl cornerback didn’t see the Los Angeles Rams’ final drive, when Stafford led his offense down the field and hit tight end Colby Parkinson for a 19-yard touchdown strike to lead the Rams to a 34-31 victory in an NFC wild-card game Saturday.

Horn spent the entirety of the last series in the medical tent and most of the previous one there, too, after being ruled out with a concussion. So he didn’t see Stafford complete 6 of 7 passes for 71 yards on the game-winning march, with his lone incompletion coming on a drop by Davante Adams.

He didn’t see Stafford work the middle of the field, rather than test Akayleb Evans, Horn’s replacement, on the outside. But even from inside the blue tent, Horn surely could feel the air go out of the stadium when the 6-foot-7 Parkinson went up over the 6-2 Tre’von Moehrig to give the Rams the lead for good with 38 seconds left.

Four Bryce Young incompletions later — the last a drop by rookie Jimmy Horn that might have given Young a shot at a Hail Mary with a few seconds left — and just like that, the Panthers’ fun, somewhat surprising season was over.

The Panthers (8-10) ended it on a three-game losing streak, their longest skid of the season. But they also did something no Carolina team had done in eight years, snapping what had been the NFL’s second-longest active playoff drought.

And when the players gathered for one last postgame meeting, defensive tackle Derrick Brown told his teammates the Panthers had a new standard.

“I’ve been here six years, and we haven’t seen this day yet,” said Brown, the first-round pick in 2020. “Seeing the Bank packed out and being able to go out there and play playoff football against the best, that’s all we can ask for at this point. The goal is to do this again, but follow through with it.”

The crowd of more than 73,000 that packed into the 30-year-old stadium roared when Cam Newton hit the Keep Pounding drum, then watched as the Panthers went toe to toe with one of the NFL’s elite teams for the second time in six weeks.

And when Young feathered a beautiful, 7-yard TD to Jalen Coker, who called it a “dot, as always,” it looked like the Panthers again might shock the Rams (13-5) and the rest of the league.

Coker’s score capped a career day for the second-year wideout and gave the Panthers a 31-27 lead with 2:39 remaining — an eternity in the NFL, especially considering the Rams had all their timeouts.

Complicating matters was the fact that Horn was out after a violent collision with teammate Claudin Cherelus, who’d also been checked for a concussion. It was the second concussion in the past two months for Horn, who missed the Panthers’ 31-28 win over the Rams in Week 13 while in the protocol.