The last man in the New Orleans Saints locker room listened to the question and let out the heaviest sigh as he considered his answer.

The New Orleans Saints had just been handed their third straight defeat inside their own home stadium, this one a 23-13 loss at the hands of the undefeated Minnesota Vikings. The offense in particular had no answers outside of one 15-play touchdown drive that required two fourth-down conversions to succeed.

And as Erik McCoy let out that sigh, he was tallying up all the ways it went wrong.

“I think it’s pretty blunt and pretty simple: It was a s****y performance by us,” McCoy said.

Three weeks ago, fresh off the Saints’ upset road victory against the Baltimore Ravens, the Caesars Superdome was rollicking as the home team took a five-point lead into the fourth quarter against the Las Vegas Raiders.

Since that point, any good will the Saints had built up has turned to dust. The Raiders outscored New Orleans by 13 in the final quarter, and in their last nine quarters — all at home — the Saints have been outscored 81-37.

When McCoy began his career with the Saints as a rookie in 2019, home-field advantage truly meant something in the Superdome, especially late in games. Knowing what it can look like has only made what has happened lately an even more bitter pill.

“I mean, you only get so many games at home in front of this crowd, who consistently shows up, and we have done nothing but crap the bed in those opportunities,” McCoy said.

Sunday, it was the offense’s turn to disappoint. Even giving Minnesota credit where it was due — the Vikings came into the game with the NFL’s fiercest pass rush and the No. 1 scoring defense — the Saints repeatedly made the going even tougher by getting in their own way.

There was a false start on a third-and-6 coming out of the 2-minute warning. There was a sequence in the second half with the Saints driving in Vikings territory in which they committed penalties on three straight plays — the last of which was declined after Tyler Shough threw an interception. There was another holding penalty that nullified what would’ve been the Saints’ longest run of the game (13 yards).

There were three turnovers, including one back-breaker when return man Jayden Price coughed the ball up on the opening kick of the second half. Since the start of that fourth quarter against the Raiders, New Orleans has given the ball away eight times in nine quarters.

“We need a fire lit under our a***s,” McCoy said. “Because our last three performances we’ve turned the ball over, what, eight times? It’s unfathomable. It’s not OK.”

Edge defender Cam Jordan has seen what the Superdome can be at its heights, too. Now in his 16th season, he’s been on a pair of Saints teams that went undefeated at home and six of them that went 6-2 or better in the Superdome.

After Sunday’s loss, the Saints have won just six of their last 20 games at home.

And that’s not even the number that really bothered Jordan the most at the moment.

“We’re 1-4,” Jordan said. “… We’re sitting at a 20% win rate, that’s not good.”

Obviously, Jordan said, the home losses are concerning. He said the team has to find a way to “bring the energy back” to what had been a difficult place for opponents to play.

But the problem is larger.

“First of all, we’ve got to find a way to win,” Jordan said. “I’m not even worried about just winning at home — I want to win on the road, at home, in the sky, in the alley, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to learn how to win together and be a more disciplined team.”

It took three weeks for the Saints to go from an intriguing team with upside to one that was fuming in the postgame locker room, searching for answers in the only statistical category that really matters.

The only response they could find in the moment was a simple acknowledgement that they clearly didn’t know how.

“The reality is, offensively, we don’t know how to win right now,” McCoy said. “It’s something we’ve got to get fixed and fixed fast, because we just went on a three-game losing skid at home with all of our fans showing up. That s**t’s not OK.”