The Michigan Panthers will have to wait a week to find out if they’ll have homefield advantage — at least technically — next month in the United Football League playoffs.

The Panthers (6-3), who already had locked up a spot in the conference title game against the defending champion Birmingham Stallions (6-3), couldn’t clinch the top record in the USFL Conference, falling, 26-22, on Saturday, May 24 at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama.

Backup quarterback Danny Etling, starting for the injured Bryce Perkins, led the Panthers to Birmingham’s 9-yard line on their final drive, completing eight of nine passes for 66 yards before a spike and three incompletions inside the red zone.

Etling finished 23-for-39 for 236 yards and two touchdowns while leading the Panthers to scores on three of their four second-half drives. Siaosi Mariner was Etling’s main target, hauling in all five passes thrown his way for 115 yards and a TD. Toa Taua led the Panthers with 47 yards rushing on 12 carries and scored a 2-yard TD to give Michigan a 22-20 lead with just under eight minutes remaining.

But quarterback J’Mar Smith marched the Stallions back down the field, covering 53 yards in a little more than five minutes before finding Deon Cain for the winning score, a 19-yard TD.

A win would have been the first for the Panthers in six tries against the Stallions, who won the USFL title two years ago, and then defeated Michigan in the USFL Conference title game in UFL play last season en route to the title in the new league’s first season.

The Panthers and Stallions will face off again on June 8 at Protective Stadium, due to a conflict at Ford Field, following the Panthers’ regular-season finale against the Houston Roughnecks, also at Ford Field, on May 31. Michigan can still grab the regular-season conference title with a victory over the Roughnecks combined with a road loss by the Stallions to the Memphis Showboats on Sunday, June 1.

The winner of the USFL Conference title game will face the XFL Conference champion, to be decided in a June 8 game between the St. Louis Battlehawks and the D.C. Defenders. St. Louis will host the UFL championship game on June 14.