Jesse Lee Freitas Jr. (September 10, 1951 – February 8, 2015) was an American professional

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

player who was a

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Am ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the majo ...

(NFL). He was drafted by the

San Diego Chargers The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...

in the sixth round of the

1974 NFL Draft The 1974 NFL draft took place at the Americana Hotel in New York City, New York, on January 29–30, 1974. Each of the 26 NFL teams were granted 17 selections for a total of 442 picks. Many experts consider the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers to have ha ...

. He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

for the

Stanford Cardinal The Stanford Cardinal are the athletic teams that represent Stanford University. As of June, 2022, Stanford's program has won 131 NCAA team championships. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 46 consecutive ...

and San Diego State Aztecs. *1972: 97/171 for 1,200 yards with 7 TD vs 14 INT. *1973: 227/347 for 2,993 yards with 21 TD vs 17 INT. His father Jesse Sr. was a professional football player in the 1940s. On February 8, 2015, Freitas was found dead in his car in

Petaluma, California Petaluma (Miwok: ''Péta Lúuma'') is a city in Sonoma County, California, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Its population was 59,776 according to the 2020 census. Petaluma's name comes from the Miwok village na ...

. Police officials said the Sonoma County coroner had not yet determined a cause of death.

References

1951 births 2015 deaths American football quarterbacks San Diego Chargers players San Diego State Aztecs football players Sportspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area Stanford Cardinal football players People from San Mateo, California Players of American football from California Junípero Serra High School (San Mateo, California) alumni {{quarterback-1950s-stub

See also

References