Terry Bradshaw absent from Fox NFC Championship coverage due to illness

Former Pittsburgh Steeler Terry Bradshaw has been a staple of NFL coverage on FOX for the past few decades. On Sunday night, the night of the AFC and NFC Championship games, the Steeler legend was absent due to an illness, according to Curt Menefee.

“Usually right here for all 30 years, Terry Bradshaw,” Menefee said. “But TB is a little under the weather right now. He’s going to have the evening off.”

Many NFL teams were worried about Bradshaw missing the show. Terry Bradshaw is one of the more decorated quarterbacks in NFL history. He was a four-time Super Bowl Champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers and two-time Super Bowl MVP. Bradshaw also brought home NFL MVP honors in 1978.

For his entire NFL career, he completed 51.9% of his passes for 27,989 yards, while tossing in 212 touchdowns with 210 interceptions. The most yards he threw in a single season in the NFL came in 1979 with the Steelers, when he threw for 3,724 yards. He’s a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and a member of the Steelers Hall of Honor.

Bradshaw played his college football for Louisiana Tech University, where he established himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the nation. As a junior during the 1968 season, he racked up 2,890 total yards, ranking number one in the NCAA in that stat category. He led the Bulldogs to a 9-2 record and a 33-13 win over the Akron Zips in the Rice Bowl. In his senior campaign, Bradshaw gained 2,314 yards, ranking third in the NCAA and led the team to an 8-2 record. His team only played in 10 games that year.

In his career with Louisiana Tech, Bradshaw completed 52.8 percent of his passes for 6,199 yards, while tossing in 39 touchdowns with 42 interceptions. He also ran for 221 yards on the ground with 11 touchdowns.

Once he hung up his cleats for the Bulldogs, Bradshaw shattered virtually all of their passing records at that time. It didn’t take him long before he was inducted into the Louisiana Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 1984. Four years later, he was inducted into the state of Louisiana’s Sports Hall of Fame. In the 1970 NFL Draft, he was the No. 1 overall selection in the first round, selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Bradshaw attended Woodlawn High School (Shreveport, Louisiana), where he actually set a national record for throwing the javelin at 244 feet 11 3/4 inches. That earned him a spot in Sports Illustrated’s feature, “Faces in the Crowd.” More than 200 colleges offered him a scholarship in track and field, but his mind was set on football.