NEW ORLEANS — Ryan Fitzgerald gave himself approximately two minutes to be well and truly upset. He walked off the field after a missed 48-yard field goal in the second quarter of the Panthers Week 10 game in New Orleans, sequestered himself, then hit the clock.

By the end of the day, he'd hit a game-winner, the fifth of his young Panthers career, to give Carolina a much-needed 20-17 division win. But in this moment, after missing his second field goal in as many weeks, he just needed to be alone.

"It's something that I've developed over time," Fitzgerald explained after the win. "It's the same thing when I make a big kick.

"I allow myself to be pissed off for like one or two minutes and then get back in the net, hit a good ball, and then get ready for my next opportunity. My next opportunity didn't come for an hour, so you just have to be ready for that and then go."

Dave Canales was prepared to take as much time as he could to decide whether to attempt the fourth-and-5 from the Saints' 37-yard line toward the end of the third quarter, or let Fitzgerald attempt the 55-yard field goal. He was discussing the decision with venerated special teams veteran and long snapper JJ Jansen, when they looked up and noticed Fitzgerald already halfway across the field.

"I was really wanting another opportunity after the miss in the first half," admitted Fitzgerald before joking. "I've got to be more careful about that if they do end up going for it with the substitution stuff and everything, but yeah, I was just excited to get out there."

Added Jansen, "I've learned that when kickers start moving out on the field, they like the distance, they feel confident, they want to kick. Kickers are not paying attention to the game situation. It is, 'Do I like this distance or not?' And so he walked out there extremely confidently."

Despite the miss from an otherwise sure-footed kicker, despite the distance, and the close game, Canales knew that confidence meant his guy was ready.

"In my mind, that told me he was going to make the kick, and I was like, 'three, three, three,' I was going field goal," shared Canales. "I could tell there was a confidence about him and determination to show up for his teammates. I just saw that in a moment; this looks like a guy who's going to make the kick."

He did make the kick, sending the Panthers up 10-7 in what had been a defensive showdown, and he gave himself two minutes to celebrate that one before going on. The kick provided some breathing room in the score and some needed confidence for Fitzgerald, though his teammates never wavered.

"I mean, you see a guy that just does his job every day," said special teams teammate Feleipe Franks. "He works at his craft, works hard, is a good person. I love seeing him in moments like that, and especially succeed in moments like that. It's just cool to see."

Fitzgerald hit four game-winners in his rookie season with Carolina last year, tying the modern NFL rookie record. Then he missed three points after attempts in the first four games this season, plus the two aforementioned field-goal misses in the past two games. It was a rare exhibition of inaccurate technique from one of the league's more accurate kickers.

"I trust Ryan," said Canales, echoing the message he's delivered the past couple of weeks. "He's working through some things. I trust the character of who he is."

Some of those things included correcting the fact that all of his misses before Sunday had been to the right. So he focused on that this past week. When his missed kick against the Saints skirted just outside the left upright, he admitted he might have overcorrected.

"This week I (had) to eliminate the right miss and I did, and I overcorrected on the first field goal today," explained the kicker. "Hit a really good ball, but it just drew a little bit. And then I trusted myself in the next two to play the right side of the uprights and hit a good ball."

His teammates, having seen what he can do and following their own closely held mottos and superstitions, just let him do his thing, trusting he'd figure it out and step up when it mattered most, which he did.

"Oh no, you never talk to kickers," joked Jansen in a way that made it clear he was actually very, very serious. "Because, for instance, the 48-yarder, he actually hit really, really well. And so the last thing you want to do under stress, and then maybe trying to come off of a miss, is start thinking about what you're doing.

"All of us, but especially kickers, work really well when they get into a flow state. I'm not thinking; I'm just hitting the ball. So there's no need to talk. There's no encouragement needed.

"The worst thing in the world is to try to go talk to a kicker. Just let him continue about his process."

All of that trust, that confidence, those practice reps, and midgame tweaks paid off when Fitzgerald walked onto the field with 0:02 seconds remaining in a tie game and knocked through a 54-yard field goal with ease, right down the middle, the longest walk-off field goal in Panthers history.

He smirked in the locker room afterward, admitting he knew it was good the second it left his foot, "yeah, yeah, it felt really good," and giving himself a fifth game-winner, which is a franchise record for most by a kicker in his first two years with a team, and the third most overall in franchise history.

"I told him I might have a little bit of love for the Seminoles now," joked corner Marco Wilson, a Florida product, of the FSU alum kicker.

Ryan Fitzgerald will give himself more than two minutes to celebrate this kick; that's his rule when it's the last kick of the game. But it won't be long. The Panthers pulled into first in the division with the win over the Saints, but it's a tight race, and every game will be crucial.

When the moment comes, Fitzgerald has proven once again that he can be ready.