Linebacker Jonathon Cooper was a surprising practice participant for the Denver Broncos yesterday.
Denver Broncos players got wowed by the team’s shiny new training facility yesterday, and one player who wasn’t expected to be enjoying the facilities was there despite his legal issues.
Linebacker Jonathon Cooper is facing an arraignment at the end of August after being arrested twice in June in a lurid domestic violence incident, but he was present and participating in practice yesterday according to a report from Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk.
Cooper was dismissed from minicamp back in June, so this is a shocking development, to say the least. Coach Sean Payton talked about it yesterday, and according to Alper, “he, General Manager George Paton and team owner Greg Penner all met with Cooper after the arrests and that Cooper completed a counseling program that the team made part of his path to returning.”
Payton also said he’s “proud” of the work Cooper has done since the arrests, which is hard to stomach given the details about strangulation that have emerged in various court reports, and Payton added that the team will “see where it goes” from here.
“We’re staying the course with league protocol, we’re staying the course with club protocol, relative to what we’re advised to do,” Payton said, via Denver Sports 104.3. “He’s been fantastic working away from the building, and we’ll continue to do that, and monitor it. We’re supportive, and very much aware of the seriousness of these types of things.”
Cooper will be arraigned on charges that include a second-degree count of assault by strangulation, and he still faces the possibility of potential league discipline that could include a six-game suspension, according the NFL’s previous actions in situations like this based on the league’s Personal Conduct Policy.
It’s hard to interpret what’s happening now as anything other than a total focus by both the NFL and the Broncos on keeping players on the field at all costs.
Typically there are two kinds of blowback from this sort of situation. The first is the predictable storm of negative media reaction, which both the Broncos and the league know will eventually fade and get lost in the shuffle of ongoing football news.
The second is about the players and their reaction to all this. Most NFL players are solid citizens who do the right thing and stay off the police blotter, but the league is also full of players who are involved in domestic violence incidents like Cooper’s, and the Broncos are making it abundantly clear that their reaction is far more important.
