If the Birmingham Stallions and St. Louis Battlehawks were playing on Saturday in the Dome at America’s Center, the focus would be on a showdown between the teams with the best records and stats in the United Football League.

But because the game between the UFL’s conference leaders will be at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, that aspect of the contest has been overshadowed by another storyline, at least in the Stallions’ home state.

St. Louis quarterback AJ McCarron was the starting QB for two of Alabama’s national-championship teams. While the focus within Crimson Tide country seems to be on McCarron’s return for his first game in Alabama since 2013, across the UFL the attention is on the top of the standings.

The Stallions have a 6-0 record in 2024 and a 13-game winning streak. After the Battlehawks lost their season-opener 18-16 to the Michigan Panthers on a 64-yard field goal with three seconds to play, St. Louis has run off five wins in a row.

“Being 6-0 makes this game even bigger,” Birmingham coach Skip Holtz said. “As I have told the team: Every game you win, the next one gets bigger. That was something I learned from my father. You just got to keep winning. …

“You just got to stay focused on where you are and make sure you can put your best foot forward. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little bit more excitement and energy and enthusiasm in the building right now. The players’ mindset, the questions being asked, their attention to detail – everybody’s zoned in. Everybody’s focused in on what we got to do. We know we’re playing a very talented team.”

St. Louis is the UFL’s highest-scoring team, with two more points than the Stallions. Birmingham has the most rushing and passing yards in the league in 2024.

The teams rank first and second in scoring defense, too, with the Stallions on top. The Battlehawks have yielded the fewest passing yards in the UFL. Birmingham leads the league in rushing defense.

“They’re all big games,” St. Louis coach Anthony Becht said. “That’s not coach-speak because we treat every game as it’s a championship game. We don’t look in the past, we don’t look beyond, we look in the moment. …

“I see a lot of similarities in Birmingham and the way they play and their style and what coach Skip Holtz says about his football team.”

In the previous two seasons, the Stallions won the USFL championship. With Birmingham’s undefeated start in the United Football League, a result of the merger of the USFL and XFL, the Stallions have a 27-3 record under Holtz.

That .900 winning percentage caused Becht to call Birmingham the “top-tier spring-league team on all phases.”

“I got a lot of respect for Skip Holtz,” Becht said. “Clearly, he is the crème de la crème of coaching in the spring leagues. … If you’re a coach that cares and wants to be a winner, you want to emulate the record, to be as good as they’ve been over the last three seasons. Consistency matters if you want to be a good coach.”

The Battlehawks came into the UFL from the XFL and have had McCarron as their starting quarterback for all but one game since the start of the 2023 season. The Stallions have used four starting quarterbacks in their 30 games, with Adrian Martinez in that spot for the past three games.

Becht said the winning formula has been the same for both franchises.

“The way they do it is they play very sound, aggressive football,” Becht said. “They’re good on both sides. Special teams are clean. They don’t make a lot of mistakes. And their quarterbacks make plays. So that’s where you got to be.

“You got to protect your quarterback, you got to be able to have a quarterback that can find the receivers and playmakers and get the football distributed at a high clip, and you got to play good defense collectively. And if you look at them, you look at us to Week 7, that’s where both teams are.”

During the XFL’s revival season in 2023, St. Louis posted a 7-3 record and missed the playoffs by a tiebreaker with the Seattle Sea Dragons. The Sea Dragons aren’t around anymore as the Battlehawks joined three other XFL teams and four USFL teams, including Birmingham, in the new spring league.

While the Stallions have clinched a postseason berth for the USFL Conference with four weeks left in the regular season, the Battlehawks have a one-game lead on the San Antonio Brahmas at the top of the XFL Conference.

“I think Anthony Becht has done a great job with his football team,” Holtz said. “They were one of the best teams in the XFL last year from a record standpoint, and they’re one of the best teams this year. They’ve got a very well-known quarterback in AJ McCarron, who is very familiar to people in Alabama. They’ve got some weapons on the perimeter. I think when you look at offensive statistics, the two of us are in the top two in most of the offensive statistics. They’re a big-play offense, they have some huge weapons, they have a really good running back – it’s got all the makings to be a great game. And then you’ve got two of the best defenses in this league, so not only record-wise but from a talent standpoint, this has got the makings to be a great game.

“I’m just glad we have the chance to play in Birmingham, that we get a chance to play a game of this magnitude at home.”

The Battlehawks and Stallions will square off at 3 p.m. CDT Saturday in Birmingham. FOX will televise the game.

The stadium gates will open at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. In addition to the usual pregame activities, such as the Stanley Stable Fan Fest, former Alabama and NFL players Bobby Humphrey, Antonio Langham, David Palmer and Trent Richardson will sign autographs starting at 2 p.m.

Ticket-holders for Saturday’s game also will be able to attend a meet-the-Stallions event from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday at TopGolf in Birmingham. There’ll be a question-and-answer session with players, and the Stallions will play TopGolf with some of the fans.

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