The USFL Championship Game on Saturday night matches the league’s best offense against the league’s best defense. But the contrasts between the Birmingham Stallions and the Pittsburgh Maulers go deeper than that.

Not only did Birmingham’s offense produce the most points and most yards in the USFL during the 2023 regular season, but Pittsburgh’s offense produced the least in both categories.

While the Maulers’ defense held opponents to a league-low in yardage, the Stallions’ defense tied for yielding the most yards.

The title game features the 2022 USFL champion against the league’s worst team from last season. Pittsburgh went 1-9 in 2022 while Birmingham had a 9-1 regular-season mark, then won two playoff games.

This season, the Stallions again had the league’s best record at 8-2 and reached the championship contest with a 47-22 semifinal victory over the New Orleans Breakers, who posted the USFL’s second-best record in 2023.

Meanwhile, the Maulers went 4-6 in the regular season, reached the playoffs via a tiebreaker and advanced to the title game with a 31-27 overtime victory in the semifinals against the Michigan Panthers, who also went 4-6 in 2023.

“They’ve been playing well lately,” Birmingham coach Skip Holtz said on Thursday. “They’re on a three-game win streak. They’ve been playing really well. …

“They’re either No. 1 or No. 2 in almost every statistical category defensively. They’re giving up under 100 yards rushing. Their pass defense is really strong with what they do. They’re a very talented football team. They got two guys in their secondary that are on the All-USFL team off one football team, so they’ve got the best defense in this league statistically when you look at it, so challenges offensively, challenges defensively. We say it every week, it’s a new week, new challenges, and we’ve got to answer them.”

After a 20-19 loss to the Houston Gamblers on June 3, Pittsburgh had a 2-6 record. But the Maulers beat Michigan 19-7 and the New Jersey Generals 26-6 to squeeze into the postseason.

“The main thing is time,” Pittsburgh coach Ray Horton said. “We just needed time to get better, to jell, to understand what we were demanding of them, what we were asking of them and for them to understand the moving parts. But really what it came down to was us playing better football. …

“We knew we had an uphill battle to get there, and we just kept plugging away. We never talked about championship. We never did. We just talked about getting better, and if you get better every week, those things come along, those things happen. That’s part of the process, so we had a process, we had a building plan, building blocks, and we just followed them and they lead you there, so we didn’t have to talk about anything. We just had to go to work.”

The Stallions and Maulers will square off for the league title at 7 p.m. CDT Saturday at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. NBC will televise the game.

Birmingham won two playoff games in Canton last year, including a 33-30 victory over the Philadelphia Stars in the 2022 USFL Championship Game. Because the USFL played its entire regular-season schedule in Birmingham last season, those were the Stallions’ only road games of 2022.

This year, Birmingham went 4-0 on the road. The Stallions’ most recent loss outside of Alabama occurred in the final season of the original USFL, when the Tampa Bay Bandits beat visiting Birmingham 17-14 on June 15, 1985.

The Stallions defeated the Maulers 24-20 on May 7 in Canton. In Birmingham’s victory over the Maulers in Week 4 of the 2023 season, wide receiver Deon Cain returned a kickoff 91 yards for a touchdown with 6:37 to play to wipe out Pittsburgh’s 20-17 lead.

“We did not play very well when we were there,” Holtz said. “We did not play very well offensively. We had a lot of struggles. I think the offense is really taking this as a personal challenge against a defense that’s really talented, and we didn’t play very well, so they want to go out and they want to put their best foot forward.”

The Birmingham offense averaged 28.7 points and 332.6 yards per game and scored 32 touchdowns (compared with 12 for the Pittsburgh offense) during the regular season with an attack triggered by quarterback Alex McGough.

“He’s played really well,” Holtz said. “He’s been really focused, really dialed in. I like the way he’s played. He’s seeing the field. He’s got a great understanding of this offense right now.”

Although Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium is Pittsburgh’s home field, Birmingham, as the South Division representative, is the designated home team for Saturday night’s game. But it doesn’t feel that way for Holtz.

“The problem is right now that there’s so many distractions,” said Holtz, whose team is coming off a Sunday night game. “Everybody says, ‘Well, you’ve had short weeks before.’ They’re closing up our locker room. We got to move out of our locker room. These guys are moving out of their apartments. Some of them are flying home from Canton, so they’re having to ship all their stuff home. Close up their apartments. Short week of practice. You know what I mean? There’s just a lot on us this week to get done, so a lot of logistics that we’re trying to deal with right now. And there’s a little game that’s going on this week, too. …

“Distractions bother you. Anytime there’re distractions, it bothers you. You want them focused just on what’s going on in the game.”

For the Maulers to complete a worst-to-first turnaround, they need to keep the faith for one more game, Horton said.

“They had faith in the system that we put into place,” Horton said of Pittsburgh’s rise. “We asked them to do some things that were different, that they weren’t accustomed to doing and just follow the road map. Now it’s easier and easier. Now they’re driving the ship. I had the chance to steer a little bit, but now it’s their ship.”

The championship-game opponents have five players from Alabama high schools and colleges on their active rosters – wide receivers Peyton Ramzy (Bessemer Academy, Tuskegee) and Austin Watkins (UAB) for the Stallions and offensive lineman Xavier Dampeer (Auburn), linebacker Reuben Foster (Auburn High, Alabama) and defensive back Sedevyn Gray (West Alabama) for the Maulers.

Birmingham’s injured list includes wide receiver Myron Mitchell (Jasper, UAB), running back Bo Scarbrough (Northridge, Alabama) and wide receiver Marlon Williams (McGill-Toolen).

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