No ordinary Joe: QB Germaine looks to Blaze frontier for Utah's AFL team

The quarterback, no matter what the league or level, is always a focal point of a football team.

But now, more than ever, Joe Germaine is the man for the Utah Blaze.

"Joe has pretty much got to take this team on his back now and make all the right decisions," said Blaze coach and general manager Danny White.

No pressure there.

During the offseason, two-thirds of the Blaze's most recognizable trio of stars left the franchise, which is now entering its third year in the Arena Football League. Siaha Burley, the AFL's 2007 Offensive Player of the Year, signed as a free agent with his hometown Arizona Rattlers. And Hans Olsen, an outspoken BYU graduate who was a 2006 member of the AFL's All-Ironman Team, retired to concentrate on his budding sports talk radio career.

"Between Siaha and Hans, that was a lot of veteran leadership there," White said. "We'll miss them both."

But Germaine is back and with the Blaze to stay. The record-setting QB signed a five-year contract extension, the longest in AFL history, that is scheduled to keep him in a Blaze uniform through the 2012 season.

"He's committed to the Blaze and we're committed to him," White said. "It's a mutual thing. We want Joe to end his career here. That's the message we're trying to send to him. 'You're our guy, Joe. You're the one we want to lead this team for the next five years."'

Germaine had bounced around from team to team in the past decade after leading Ohio State to a Rose Bowl championship in 1997. He was a backup with the St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Chiefs, Cincinnati Bengals and San Diego Chargers in the NFL before starting his AFL career, again as a backup, with the Rattlers in 2005.

He finally was given a chance to be the No. 1 quarterback on a professional team in 2006 with the Blaze. He showed he was up to the task, too. His passing rating during an injury-filled 2006 campaign was second-best in the AFL. He followed that up with the most prolific passing season in league history last year, when he threw for a record 5,005 yards and 107 touchdowns. In fact, the ball used to complete the pass putting him over the 5,000-yard mark is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Germaine, now 31, could have become a free agent after the upcoming season and could've tried to see what he'd be worth on the open market. Instead, he rewarded the Blaze for their trust in him by signing the longest contract in AFL history.