Norm Snead, veteran NFL quarterback, is dead at 84

Norm Snead, quarterback in the National Football League for 16 seasons in the 1960s and 1970s and a four-time Pro Bowl selection, died Sunday. He was 84.

A spokesman for the football program at Wake Forest University, where Snead played before turning pro, told The Associated Press on Monday that the school learned of Snead's death through his family. The cause and location of his death were not provided.

Snead was the second overall pick in the 1961 NFL draft, selected by Washington. He was also taken 33rd overall by the Buffalo Bills in the American Football League draft that year. He chose Washington and played there for three seasons, making two Pro Bowl appearances, before being traded to the Philadelphia Eagles for quarterback Sonny Jurgensen and defensive back Claude Crabb.

Jurgensen, who was with Philadelphia when the Eagles won the championship in 1960, became the face of the Washington franchise. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was a broadcaster for the team for decades.

The Eagles never reached the playoffs in the seven seasons Snead spent with the team. Despite this, he was picked for the Pro Bowl in 1965, when he threw for 15 touchdowns and 2,346 yards and led three league game-winning drives for a team that finished with five wins and nine losses.

Towards the end of his career, he bounced around the league, playing one season for the Minnesota Vikings, two and a half for the New York Giants and a season and a half for the San Francisco 49ers. He returned to the Giants in 1976 before calling it a career in 1977.

In 159 NFL starts, Snead went 52-100-7 with 196 touchdowns. His 257 interceptions rank sixth on the career list.

At Wake Forest, he earned Atlantic Coast Conference honors twice while setting more than a dozen conference records in 1958, 1959 and 1960. After leading the conference with seven interceptions in a season, Snead joked, “I couldn't run and I couldn't get out of the way, but I could throw the football.”

Norman Bailey Snead was born on July 31, 1939 in Halifax County, Virginia. He played football, basketball and baseball at Warwick High School in Newport News and was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1984.

Information about survivors was not immediately available.