METAIRIE, La. — So far this season, the New Orleans Saints are proving to be anything but the Super Bowl contender many expected.

The Saints square off with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Sunday in a matchup of 1-3 teams.

The good news for the Saints is they are only one game out of first place in the NFC South after the first quarter of the season — which means there is a lot of time to get things corrected and make a run at the division title, even if their chances of earning a bye and home-field advantage in the postseason are quickly slipping away.

“This team — bottom line — has not found what it has to do to win, and that’s what we need to search for right now,” right tackle Zach Strief said Monday, hours after the Saints’ 38-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. “It’s very simple: You have to work harder. Everybody does.”

But working harder during the week doesn’t guarantee anything. A vast improvement on the field is needed if the Saints want to remain a viable contender for a playoff spot and possibly a deep postseason run.

The Saints are intent on rebounding after being manhandled by the Cowboys’ offense and defense. The blowout, which followed New Orleans’ lone win against the Minnesota Vikings, was a shocker compared to the Saints’ late losses in the first two games by a total of five points.

The Saints decided they must concentrate on what they are doing, rather than what the two 2-2 teams ahead of them in the NFC South — the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers — are doing.

“If we continue to play the way we’re playing, then results will be back and forth, and we’ll be sitting here with a 7-9 (or) 8-8 record,” coach Sean Payton said. “There has to be a sense of urgency to clean up the mistakes we’re discussing here and improve in some of these areas. All that other stuff will take care of itself. It’s all out there.”

That is assuming the Saints’ offense, which scored just 61 points in the past three games, and the defense, which has only five sacks and one takeaway, can climb out of their early-season funk in time.

Outside linebacker Junior Galette, one of the stars of a defense that piled up 49 sacks and ranked fourth in yards allowed during an 11-5 season in 2013, was among the players lamenting the team’s woeful start.

“You have to be realistic and know that we’re not as good as we thought we were,” Galette said, acknowledging that there was nothing encouraging about how the defense has played in the three losses. “We’re not looking at other teams; we’re looking at ourselves.”

Payton added, “Here’s what we can’t do: We can’t continue with the exact same preparation plan and expect different results, right? Look, we will find out a little bit about this team here. When you start the season 1-3 and get punched like that, very quickly we’ll find out a little bit about what we’re made of.”