Jonathon Cooper practiced with the Broncos in the team’s first on-field session of the 2026 season on Wednesday, a little more than a month before he is slated to be arraigned on a felony assault charge and others related to domestic violence allegations.
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Cooper took part in all of the team’s work and head coach Sean Payton expressed support for the outside linebacker, who was arrested twice in a week in June on domestic violence-related charges.
Payton claimed the Broncos have no say in what happens at this stage of the process, though it is entirely the team’s discretion to keep Cooper on its roster.
“There’s a process relative to the league, relative to the legal process,” Payton said. “And then, as that all comes together, we can make the right decision. That’s simply it. There’s no follow-up. There’s no other underlying. It’s today’s protocol. There’s maybe a dozen players in other camps that are going through a similar protocol.
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“We’re proud of the work he did this last, call it month-and-a-half. It wasn’t easy. And it’ll continue to be a challenge and we’ll see where it goes. But fully supportive of him right now as we gather all the information and then we go from there.”
Payton also indicated he thought there could be a resolution to Cooper’s case “sooner than later” despite an arraignment hearing in the case not being slated until Aug. 31 and a trial date that would come sometime after that.
Payton left the door open for a final decision on Cooper’s status in the organization to be made after the league’s review and the court proceedings are final, but said Cooper has been “fantastic with the work he’s done away from the building.”
Cooper was first arrested June 4 after an altercation with his ex-girlfriend that escalated after the ex-girlfriend accused Cooper of cheating on her.
Cooper was eventually charged with felony assault after a forensic exam done at Anschutz Medical Center after the altercation indicated the girlfriend had been strangled.
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A forensic nurse who evaluated Cooper’s girlfriend reported to police that the woman had experienced “strangulation with hypoxia and traumatic brain injury,” the arrest affidavit reads.
“Regarding seriously bodily injury, it is my medical opinion that the above … patient experienced physical injury which, either at the time of the actual injury or at a later time involved… (a) substantial risk of death (and) a substantial risk of protracted loss or impairment of the function of any part or organ on the body,” the nurse wrote, as the affidavit details.
Cooper originally denied any physical altercation to a responding officer, according to the affidavit. After the officer asked Cooper if he grabbed his girlfriend’s neck, Cooper “nodded his head up and down, coupled with an mm-hmm,” and said he grabbed it “aggressive,” the affidavit reads.
Payton, asked specifically about the nurse’s findings, said Wednesday that he’d “read everything” but that it would be “unfair” for him to comment.
“When it’s finally finished, we’ll all have a better feel,” he said. “It’s unfair for me to answer any of those questions right now without having the totality of it finalized.
“I think that will come sooner than later.”
Cooper was arrested a week after the initial incident after he sent 20 unreturned messages to the ex-girlfriend — several of them sexually explicit in nature and some that appear to ask her to violate a contact order — and, according to arrest records, showed up at an apartment she was staying at and pounded on the door for 5-10 minutes asking to talk with her.
If Cooper is found by the NFL to have violated the league’s personal conduct policy, the baseline suspension for domestic violence-related matters is six games. The league can suspend players for more or fewer games than that, depending on the circumstances.
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