Wife of ex-NFL player Rob Kelly describes his brain damage

The wife of a former NFL player has published a heart-wrenching account of her husband's cognitive decline after a career in tackle football.

Emily Kelly's article about her husband Rob, published in the New York Times on Friday just two days before the Super Bowl, is hardly the first mention of a football player developing neurological problems.

However, it is one of the most excruciatingly detailed accounts of the day-to-day hardships many of these players now live with - something that research is increasingly attributing to repetitive sub-concussive hits to the head over years.

Rob Kelly, now 43, played four seasons as a safety with the New Orleans Saints and one with the Patriots before he was forced into early retirement in 2002 due to nerve damage between his neck and his shoulder at just 28 years old.

But since 2007, when he met Emily, he transformed from a 'tenderhearted' husband and an 'amazing father' into an argumentative, paranoid and suicidal 'ghost', despite no conclusive brain injury diagnosis.

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