The NFL removed Jonathon Cooper from the Commissioner Exempt List on Friday, making Denver’s most productive homegrown pass rusher eligible to play for the first time this season.
Cooper, 28, has been on the list since Aug. 30 and has missed all six Broncos games. He is now eligible for Week 7 against the Arizona Cardinals on Oct. 25. He was not suspended, and the league’s personal conduct policy investigation remains open.
The legal situation, stated plainly
Cooper was arrested in June after an argument with his then-girlfriend at their Parker, Colorado apartment and was released on personal recognizance the same day. He was arrested again on June 11. In August he pleaded not guilty to felony assault by strangulation, assault causing bodily injury, criminal mischief, and violating a protective order.
A Douglas County judge has moved his trial from mid-November to March 2, 2027, with a pretrial conference Feb. 23, and granted his request to travel with the team for road games through the regular season, including the Oct. 25 game in Arizona. The alleged victim objected to the travel request.
He has not been tried and has not been convicted. The allegations in the arrest affidavit are allegations. The league’s baseline discipline for a domestic violence violation is six games, and the NFL has chosen to let him play while the case is pending, which means discipline could still follow after the case resolves.
Neither Cooper, his attorney, the Broncos nor the league has issued a public statement.
What Denver gets on the field
Cooper has 31.5 sacks in 81 career games with 65 starts, along with 266 tackles and 33 tackles for loss. His best season was 2024, when he had 10.5 sacks. He had 8.5 in 2023 and 8.0 in 2025, and he played all 17 games in each of those three seasons. He signed a four-year, $60 million extension in November 2024.
His story is one of the better ones in the building. He fell to the seventh round in 2021, 239th overall, because of heart complications at Ohio State, and turned into the Broncos’ best internally developed edge player.
Denver did not need him to go 4-2
That is the uncomfortable part of this. The Broncos are 4-2 without him, having just beaten Seattle 17-14 in overtime on Thursday night when Wil Lutz hit a 53-yarder after Ja’Quan McMillian intercepted Sam Darnold.
So this is not a rescue. It is a 4-2 team adding 31.5 career sacks to a defense that has been good enough to win six games’ worth of football without him, heading into a game against a 1-4 Arizona team.
One caution on expectations: reinstatement makes a player eligible, not active. Cooper still has to be added to the 53-man roster, and nobody has said he will be out there on Oct. 25. A player who has not practiced since late August is unlikely to be on a full snap count in his first game back regardless.
Denver’s defense gets better. The case is still coming in March.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.