Shootout: Terry Bradshaw on injured reserve

Bradshaw, 55, was invited to play in the Franklin Templeton Shootout pro-am and be the emcee of the Thursday night tournament dinner last month.

"They said you can play with him and I'm like, wow, that's even better," Bradshaw said on Thursday at Tiburn Golf Club.

Bradshaw started working on his game -- he's an 8.8 handicap -- at his home course in Scottsdale, Ariz. His back had other ideas. Bradshaw hurt himself while practicing and was forced to pull out of the pro-am.

Thursday, he arrived and went to the course to meet up with Norman's group just as it was finishing the pro-am.

"When I had a chance to come here and play with him, geez, how cool is that?" said Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1975, '76, '79 and '80 and was a two-time Super Bowl MVP. "And my back goes out."

Bradshaw was a backup, essentially. Rush Limbaugh, the political conservative radio host, originally was going to fill the role.

But shortly after his resignation from ESPN's "NFL Countdown," Limbaugh checked himself into rehab on Oct. 10 for abusing painkillers.

Enter Bradshaw, who is a studio analyst for Fox's NFL pregame show. On Thursday, he offered his opinions on a few NFL issues: the struggles of the Dolphins and Buccaneers and the chances that the Kansas City Chiefs could go unbeaten.

As the season winds down, teams will be playing the Kansas City Chiefs harder and harder if they continue to remain unbeaten. The Chiefs are 9-0 with seven games left. The 1972 Dolphins were the last team to go unbeaten, when the NFL had 14 regular- season games.

Bradshaw doesn't get how the Chiefs keep on winning, or at least how they do it.

"I'm so used to the teams in my era," he said. "Boy, (they) were dominating. They're not dominating. They're a defense who gives up a lot of yards and (quarterback Trent) Green will play well this week and Priest Holmes is not rushing for 140 or 150 (yards), Dante Hall's basically won three games by himself.

"And you go 'Is that how you want to win?' If you're them, yeah. If you're on the outside looking at the power of their schedule and rank the way they won, then you would come away saying 'That's not how you win championships.' But hey, this is a new millennium."

Meanwhile, the Dolphins (5-4) have lost three of four and running back Ricky Williams, who led the league in rushing last year, has gone six weeks without a 100-yard game. Jay Fiedler has missed the last three games with a knee injury and backup Brian Griese has committed a lot of turnovers the past two weeks.

"If you're not running the football, they're not going to drop back and throw it 70 times a game," he said. "Fiedler's done a good job when they run the ball.

Griese will do a good job when they can run the ball."

As for the Bucs (4-5), Bradshaw can identify with what they're going through. His Steelers in 1980 were the last team to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

"You'd never dream that that defense would give up so many drives at the end of games to lose games, but, boy, they've done it," he said. "Now they're searching and it's not going to get any better."

"I know. I've been there. We've repeated and it's tough. It's tough to meet the challenge week-in and week-out when everybody is playing you so hard."

Thursday, it was tough for Bradshaw not to be able to play.

"You get a chance to play with your golf hero and I didn't get to do it," he said. "It's kind of a bummer. I'm trying to be real nice to him to see if he'll invite me back."