Two weeks ago, the Birmingham Stallions had an undefeated record in the 2024 United Football League season and carried a 15-game winning streak. But in its past two outings, Birmingham lost to the San Antonio Brahmas 18-9 on May 25 and edged the Michigan Panthers 20-19 on June 1.

Michigan had a chance to win at the end, but Jake Bates missed a 53-yard field-goal attempt on the final snap of the regular season.

The Stallions and Panthers square off again in the USFL Conference Championship Game at 2 p.m. CDT Saturday at Protective Stadium in Birmingham on ABC. The winner advances to the United Football League Championship Game on June 16 in St. Louis.

Stallions coach Skip Holtz thinks his team will have a renewed focus after a long countdown to the postseason.

“I think there’s a totally different attitude in the building,” Holtz said. “I know I’ve been asked a lot in the last couple of weeks: What do you play for? … You’ve been a playoff team for four weeks, after Week 6. You had homefield advantage after Week 8. And I’d like to think, ‘You know what? We’re playing the game, we’re going to play at the best of our ability.’ But I don’t think there’s any doubt we didn’t play with the same edge the last two weeks that we have played with the entire season.

“I see a difference just in the building. I see a difference in the attitude, in the tempo of practice. There’s an excitement, there’s an energy, there’s an enthusiasm right now, and I think these guys are really ready to go play.”

Last week’s game was the second Birmingham-Michigan meeting of the season. The Stallions defeated the Panthers 20-13 on April 7 in Detroit.

Birmingham is undefeated in four games against Michigan, but in each meeting the Stallions’ margin of victory has been smaller than in the previous game until the single-point margin last week.

“It’s always hard to beat somebody three times in a season,” Holtz said. “… But I will say I would much rather go into this game with the confidence of being 2-0 in those two games rather than 0-2. We know it’s going to be a challenge. It’s going to be playoff football. You’re going to see an entirely different level of energy, excitement and enthusiasm for both teams. I think it’ll be hard-hitting. It’s got all the makings just to be a great game.”

Last week’s game gave the Stallions a test run against the new-look Panthers. In the first meeting, Michigan’s offense revolved around quarterback E.J. Perry. But when Perry went out with a hamstring injury in the fourth game, Danny Etling became the triggerman for a more run-centric offense. In the first game against Birmingham, the Panthers ran for 47 yards on 14 carries. Last week, Michigan had 135 yards and one touchdown on 23 rushing attempts, and leading rusher Matthew Colburn II is expected to play on Saturday after missing that contest.

Birmingham has had similar games on offense against Michigan in 2024. The Stallions’ passing attack has been spotty, completing 27-of-55 passes for 304 yards with one touchdown and one interception, while Birmingham has made good gains on the ground with 264 yards and three touchdowns on 50 carries.

A big difference between the two regular-season meetings: Birmingham had seven sacks and Michigan had none in the first game. Last week, the Panthers had five sacks and the Stallions had one.

Now comes the unusual circumstance of teams squaring off in consecutive weeks.

“Advantages? You’re familiar with them,” Holtz said on Tuesday. “You just put a game plan together. You just studied nine games of their season, and this week we’re studying the same nine plus one. There’s a lot of familiarity with them. Our scouting report this morning with the offense normally is about a 30-minute scouting report – fronts, coverages, personnel, where they rank statistically, what their strengths (and) weaknesses are. Today, it lasted about eight minutes. …

“One of the other strengths is everything’s fresh, so you take what you ran last week and you just add a couple of little wrinkles. We had a lot of things in that game that we never got to, that we didn’t call. Those things just carry right over into this week and now you really have the opportunity to grease them up for two weeks rather than one.

“One of the disadvantages is the same thing. Schematically, what are they going to do differently? You can’t go into it and say, ‘OK, this is what they did last week. They’re going to do the same thing,’ because I know for us, we ran some things to set up things we’re going to run this week, so even though we’re playing two weeks back-to-back, they’re going to be a lot of things that both teams are going to see that maybe we haven’t shown during the course of the season to see how people are going to react to something new.”

Holtz is hoping for a strong fan turnout at Protective Stadium to help propel the Stallions to their third consecutive league championship game. Birmingham captured the crown the previous two seasons in the USFL and has the opportunity to win three titles in a row after the USFL and XFL merger created the United Football League in 2024.

“Bring a friend,” Holtz said. “We need that place — we need people in it. It’s a homefield advantage. Bring a friend. Let’s light that place up. We’ve got a great crowd. They’re loud, they’re into it, they’re vocal, they make a difference, and I just think about if we could try to close that lower bowl, oh my gosh, it would be absolutely awesome and become a huge homefield advantage, as it is now.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.