CHARLOTTE — There was a lot happening at once.

From the Panthers' standpoint, it was either an "egregious" pass interference on Tommy Tremble (to use his word), or a late flag after they had already run another play.

From the Broncos' standpoint, it was an opportunity for — and it turned out to be — a game-changing turnover.

From the referee's perspective, the play was "bang-bang," and not as "egregious" as Tremble thought.

And from the league office's perspective, the replay challenge was thrown by Broncos coach Sean Payton in plenty of time.

That's a lot coming together in a small moment of time, and what it turned into was a pivotal swing in the Broncos' 26-21 win over the Panthers at Bank of America Stadium.

"It was a whirlwind," Panthers center Luke Fortner said. "I've never seen anything quite like that."

And that was an understatement.

Leading 14-13 late in the third quarter, with the ball on the Broncos' 1-yard line, Bryce Young threw a pass that Tremble didn't catch, which appeared to have been impacted by Broncos linebacker Justin Strnad running into Tremble without looking back at the ball. What seemed like a footnote at the time was the ball hitting Tremble's leg, and Broncos safety Devon Key snatching it out of mid-air.

"Back turned in those areas, it's normally when you throw those," Young said of the potential pass interference. "It's just part of the game. Yeah, no need to get into the refs. Not my job as a player."

Tremble, and a lot of other people, were convinced it should have been a pass interference on Strnad, but took the next-play approach, and the Panthers lined up and handed it to Chuba Hubbard on second down.

"I thought when they stopped the play, I thought they were stopping to review for pass interference," Tremble said, although that's not a thing that can happen (a one-year experiment ended in 2019). "That stuff happens in football. There's nothing you can do about it. I didn't know after we ran another play that they could go back for it. That was confusing to us, a lot of us.

"I thought that's what they were reviewing it for at first because I thought it was pretty egregious and not looking back at the ball, running straight into me before the ball hit me, and then that's what I thought initially was stopped for."

Referee Alan Eck told the pool reporter he saw it differently.

"As the referee, I am watching the quarterback after the ball gets released. I had two officials that had a great look at the play," Eck said. "They felt the defender arrived at the same time as the pass. We refer to that as a bang-bang play. They felt the timing was fine. The official ruling on the field was an incomplete pass, and then we went to replay."

But before they went to replay, the Panthers huddled and handed off to Hubbard.

"We felt like we got that next play off, and obviously I don't know the sequence, challenge flag before or whatever, but to us we're the players, and I don't know how many of us actually didn't realize it was even close, right?" Fortner said. "And so once we ran that next thing, I thought they were reviewing the spot on Chuba was challenged on the following play. It wasn't until the refs started conferring that I realized it was the play before."

Panthers head coach Dave Canales and Young were both pleading their cases, but Canales said the refs on the field told him Payton had thrown it in time.

"That's a first for me in football at any level," Young said.

"We ran a play, and I've never seen someone run a play full through and then get a challenge for a previous play," Tremble said. "I didn't know that was possible. And so, you know, it's unfortunate. Bad luck for us, and I guess good on them for whatever they did."

NFL vice president of instant replay Mark Butterworth confirmed that Payton's challenge came in before the next play in the pool report.

"Replay can get involved to make sure that the head coach throws his challenge flag prior to the next snap," Butterworth said. "We were actually able to use angles to show that the flag was out prior to the ball being snapped, and so we permitted the challenge."

That didn't stop the confusion, or the deflation that came with being inches away from overcoming a 10-0 deficit and possibly going up 21-13, to giving the ball away.

Especially when the Broncos then embarked on a 14-play, 80-yard touchdown drive with their new life, taking a 19-14 lead which they would not surrender.​

"I mean it was huge," Canales said. "And I mean flipped the fields completely, and they did a great job of executing on the next drive, but those are situations we've got to be able to finish and punch the ball in there, however we're going to do that, we're going to be in four downs right there. We're going to take them all and try to do what we could to score a touchdown in that situation."

"Yeah, I mean it was definitely a game of momentum today," linebacker Devin Lloyd said. "Especially coming out at halftime trying to ride those highs, obviously the interception, crazy how just the sequence and how that happened.

"But ultimately it's our job to put out the fire. We're firefighters, and we don't ask how the fire happened; it's just going out and getting it out, and that's the way we look at it, trying to do our job and make a play to get the ball back to offense."

Going from up 21-13 to down 19-14 was one swing, but the emotional swing carried over, with the Broncos adding another touchdown to go up 26-14. The Panthers scored another touchdown to narrow the gap and had the ball with a chance to win late, before a strip-sack-fumble ended it.

But that moment loomed large.

"It's really tough, and we preach refocus, right?" Fortner said. "So, trying to refocus is tough, but we get paid to do it, right? So we've got to do a better job. All right, something bad happened. Just worry about the next one."

And now, after their third straight loss which dropped them to 3-5 (though still tied for first in the NFC South prior to the Bucs' game late Sunday).

"I think it was kind of the name of the game for this game was kind of climbing out of adversity," Tremble said. "Of being down 10-0 and being able to claw our way back to the lead and then have that play happen but still trying to be in the game, be competitive, and we did it all the way up until the end of the game.

"So, I think that kind of shows the mentality of the team no matter what's going on. We're going to keep trying to find a way, and so I think as long as we have that kind of mindset and have one less of those kinds of bad plays, we can go out there and win games."