---

By S&E News Correspondent—Michael Burtch

Phoenix, AZ—The Arizona Rattlers went into their bye week on a high note after dumping the Columbus Destroyers 70-53 Friday night. The Rattlers earned their first home win of the season behind Joe Germaine’s 8 touchdown passes and moved their record to 3-8 while it dropped the Destroyers to 1-9. Randy Gatewood gave Germaine props for his performance; “The protection was great. Anytime you give him that kind of protection, he’s going to light you up. Hats off to him tonight, he played almost a perfect game tonight.”

The Rattlers’ defense stepped up to start the game. They forced Columbus into a 34-yard field goal attempt, which was missed. Arizona promptly scored on their third offensive play, a 45-yard bomb to WR/DB Randy Gatewood from Germaine. Columbus answered when QB Matt D’Orazio hit OS Damien Groce with a 21-yard touchdown pass and took a 7-6 lead. The Rattlers began to fall into their funk again when newcomer Jerald Brown fumbled after making his first catch as a Rattler. The Destroyers capitalized and went up by 7. Before the quarter ended, Arizona pulled to within a point when FB Kerry Taylor rumbled 16 yards for a touchdown.

Columbus continued to stay in control early in the second quarter until the Rattlers defense made a stop on a fourth down pass play. Germaine helped Arizona capitalize when he found OS Siaha Burley from five yards out and gave the Rattlers a 26-20 lead. The teams traded touchdowns the rest of the quarter with Arizona getting the final word of the half when Burley pulled in another 5-yard scoring pass from Germaine to give Arizona a 39-34 halftime advantage.

Germaine has happy with how the offense gelled, “We just clicked. What a difference a week makes. We didn’t really come in with anything different from last week to this week, but the execution was there, it was a lot better and we were able to put a lot of points on the board.”

The Rattlers came out in the third quarter and scored what became the clinching touchdown. Randy Gatewood caught a 42-yard pass to move Arizona into scoring position before Burley caught another touchdown pass to put the Rattlers up 46-34 and they never looked back. A fumble by Justin Isom on the next play led to Burley’s fourth touchdown catch and a 53-34 advantage. The Rattlers made another fourth down stop and put the game out of reach on their next drive. Brown made up for his early fumble after scoring on a 37-yard screen pass. The Destroyers finished the quarter with a goose egg.

In the fourth quarter Columbus scored three touchdowns to Arizona’s touchdown and a field goal to shorten the margin to 17.

Joe Germaine was sharp in earning Offensive Player of the Game honors. He went 23 of 35 for 324 yards and threw 8 touchdown passes. “There are always things we can do better. There’s never that perfect game,” Germaine said, “I know there’s some plays I wish I could have made and done better today, but a win’s a win and we really needed one and we’ll take this.” Germaine believes the Rattlers are still in the hunt for a playoff berth, “We still feel like we’re still playing for something. We have one game seasons and this was the start of it tonight. “

Burley pulled in 7 balls for 86 yards and 5 touchdowns. Randy Gatewood added 101 yards on 4 catches and scored a touchdown. "They played a lot of zone, and when you play a lot of zone, you're going to have guys open underneath," Gatewood said. "Joe was making the proper reads and getting the ball out quickly and we executed."

Jerald Brown was named the Ironman of the Game after catching 5 passes for 68 yards and a touchdown and making 3 tackles on defense with one pass breakup.

D’Orazio completed 21 of 36 passes for 272 yards and threw 6 touchdown passes. Groce pulled in 10 passes for 112 yards and scored 2 touchdowns. WR/LB Cornelius White added 5 catches for 75 yards and scored 2 touchdowns.

Arizona gets to rest for a week before hosting the Austin Wranglers on April 22nd. Gatewood is glad to have a week off, “We need it, we’ve got some guys beat up, and we lost another lineman tonight. We need the bye week to try to heal to try to get guys healthy. Hopefully next week we can use the motivation from this game to carry it over into the following week. We have to go out and play like we played tonight. If we can do that, we like our chances.”