CNN's 'The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper' Examines Player Safety in Football

At the start of the 2023 NFL season, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper will examine player safety in football at all levels and the various steps intended to make sport safer.

"This is not the game that I played—it's a whole new NFL," said CNN Sports anchor and correspondent Coy Wire. "From unprecedented mid-game cancellations after injuries out of respect for players' health and well-being, to the futuristic technology being used to track, analyze, and potentially detect injuries before they happen, this experience has blown me away and has sparked even greater hope for the future of the game I love."

The show will premiere on Sunday, Sept. 10, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. This is a new time as of Sept. 6, and may differ from the time publicized earlier in the week.

Wire played college football at Stanford before embarking on a nine-year NFL career. In his piece for The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, he interviewed a number of notable figures, including Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott and XFL co-owner Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

When it comes to player safety, the paradigm steadily began to shift with the publication of more research into the long-term effects of concussions. The Boston University CTE Center said in February that 345 of the 376 former NFL players they examined were posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

As a result, the NFL in particular has introduced various rules and technological advancements with the intention of lowering the long-term health risks for its players.

In The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, Wire reported on the ground from the offseason training camps of the Atlanta Falcons and New York Giants. He also visited Biocore, the company with whom the NFL partners to explore new avenues with on-field equipment and other technologies.