"The NFL is a cult"

Crews’ comments come as a lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of more than 600 former players who contend they were abetted by team physicians and trainers across the NFL who routinely — and often illegally — dispensed powerful narcotics and other controlled substances on game days to mask the pain.

Among them were the painkillers Percodan, Percocet and Vicodin, anti-inflammatories such as Toradol, and sleep aids such as Ambien — “handed out like candy at Halloween,” according to lead attorney Steven Silverman.

Sometimes, the lawsuit also charges, the drugs were given in combinations as “cocktails.”

“The stuff works,” Jeremy Newberry, who played seven of his nine seasons in San Francisco before retiring in 2009, told The Associated Press in an interview. “It works like crazy. It really does.”