When it comes to Terry Bradshaw’s resume, it’s picture-perfect. Four Super Bowl wins, two Super Bowl MVP awards, a Pro Football Hall of Fame badge, and the list continues. But personally, Bradshaw had his own battles. At 78, the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback wrote a book, Looking for Terry. Promoting the book on Good Morning America, he opened up about his battle against cancer, dropping an update.
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“But you’ve been through a lot. You have two types of cancer. But you’re good now?” asked Michael Strahan.
“Yes, I am. I’m cancer-free, Mike,” confirmed Bradshaw.
Cancer came not once but twice, and that too, within a year in Bradshaw’s life.
“In November, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I went to the Yale University Medical Center … surgery, treatment. As of today, I am bladder cancer-free,” he said in an interview in 2022. “Alright, that’s the good news. Then in March, feeling good. I had a bad neck, I get an MRI, now we find a tumor in my left neck and it’s a Merkel cell tumor, which is a rare form of skin cancer.”
At first, Bradshaw kept his first diagnosis private. His focus was entirely on the treatment as he kept negative thoughts away.
“I didn’t feel panic. I didn’t think death. I’m pretty sure I said, ‘Well, curable.’ Yeah. The doctor thinks in six weeks,” Bradshaw said. “And so I never once went, ‘Oh, I got to get my house in order. I got to do this.’ I just said, ‘OK, curable.’ That’s what I needed to hear.”
Not long after completing treatment for bladder cancer, Bradshaw learned that he had Merkel cell cancer near his parotid gland. The diagnosis required surgery to remove 27 lymph nodes, followed by six weeks of radiation treatments. But nothing could break his mental strength and his willingness to fight back.
“No, death did not frighten me. It did not in any way frighten me. Now, that’s easy to say because I haven’t been told, ‘You’re dying. Well, you’re going to die,'” Bradshaw said on the No Time But Now podcast.
Surviving cancer gave Bradshaw a new perspective on life with his wife, Tammy, encouraging the couple to explore more places and make different plans for their time together.
“I want her to have more happiness than she ever thought possible. To me, that just makes, that fills my spirit. That fills me with joy,” Bradshaw said. “To know that, you know, that I’m a good husband now. I’m a good husband now. And I’ve got a great wife and I want her to know what it’s like to really feel loved.”
Besides cancer, Bradshaw also fought depression.
“I knew there was something wrong with me,” he shared on the Good Morning America show. “I couldn’t understand, Mike, why I would go in these deep holes, and they were sickening. I can’t describe it to you because it’s a sickening, sick illness. And finally, I said, I got to get some help. Something’s wrong. I don’t know what it is. And I went it took me three different doctors, three progressions to finally get to the point where they diagnosed me clinically depressed.”
Having seen so much, Bradshaw is now 78 and is still juggling TV responsibilities, working as co-host for FOX NFL Sunday. Under the new agreement, he will remain with FOX through its 2029 Super Bowl broadcast, when he will be 80. The fact that former analyst Jimmy Johnson retired from the FOX NFL Sunday desk in 2025 at 81 years old is what leads to the assumption that Bradshaw will retire soon. The former Steelers quarterback broke his silence on that as well.
“I realize my time on television as a sports broadcaster is coming to an end,” Bradshaw said on NBC News Daily this week.
Bradshaw entered broadcasting in 1984, the year he called time on his playing career. He worked as a color commentator at CBS before becoming part of the network’s pregame show in 1990. He switched to FOX in 1994 and has continued appearing on its Sunday pregame show for more than three decades.