Jim McMahon, 6 other former players sue NFL over concussions

"It is a brutal way to see somebody die, and to live with it daily and the ups and downs. It's breaking our family's heart," Garland Radloff, a nursing aide who lives with her husband in Hilton Head, S.C., told The Associated Press on Thursday. She and several other wives are also named plaintiffs in the suit.

"If Wayne and I can use our situation to help others," she said, "that is what it's all about."

In a sharp about-face in late 2009, the NFL has encouraged players and their families to cooperate with the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, which is conducting autopsies on the brains of former athletes — and finding disturbing evidence of brain damage in football players, boxers and a former NHL player. McMahon has agreed to leave his brain to the center.

The NFL also has issued new concussion guidelines, and ordered that independent physicians determine when a player should return.

The other plaintiffs in the Philadelphia suit are Gerry Feehery, 51, a former Eagles center who played in the league from 1985 to 1989; Mike Furrey, 34, a wide receiver on several teams from 2003 to 2010; and Steve Kiner, 64, a linebacker with the Dallas Cowboys and others from 1970 to 1978.