Image courtesy of Boston Renegades

This is certainly a new day for the Renegades franchise.

After five years of dominating the Women’s Football Alliance, it seems that the rest of the league finally realizes this simply isn’t the same old Boston team.

After seeing a 42-game win streak snapped against St. Louis, Boston used a bye week to reassess and thoroughly embarrassed its next opponent (New York) by scoring 90 points.

The Renegades seemed to have fixed their newfound issues and were ready to take the show on the road to Pittsburgh Saturday night, but the Passion had other plans. Pittsburgh shut out Boston in the first half, building a 17-point lead. The Renegades mounted a comeback, but in the end fell 26-21.

Boston (3-2) wraps up the regular season this weekend at home against D.C. with massive playoff implications involved as the Divas are also 3-2. Pittsburgh (5-0) earned home field advantage for the WFA Pro ‘National’ conference playoffs with the win.

Boston had 259 yards of rushing offense, but turned the ball over twice (interceptions) and went 1-11 on third down. Ruth Matta had 201 of those yards on the ground and Megan McFadden had 56 yards passing.

“In big games like this, you’ve got to bring extra effort and I don’t think in the first half we brought a lot of effort to match theirs,” said offensive coordinator Vernon Crawford.

Down 17-0 at the half and 23-0 in the third quarter, Matta had touchdown runs of 39 and 20 yards to get the Renegades back in the game. A 37 yard field goal in the fourth quarter put Pittsburgh up 26-14, but a Katie Falkowski nine yard TD run and Maggie Barden’s third PAT cut it to 26-21.

Unfortunately, the Passion were able to close the door late and send Boston back to the plane once again wondering why this once nearly-impossible-to-beat franchise no longer strikes fear in the rest of the league.

The loss of Amanda Alpert and obviously Allison Cahill is the easy answer, but is it the only answer? Time will tell, but Crawford believes this version of the Renegades will still be alright.

“We’ve just got to be better,” Crawford added. “We’ll be better. At home, everybody will be there. We’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to a great game from D.C., but we’ve just got to take care of our own stuff first.”