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Jeff Legwold, ESPN Senior WriterNov 4, 2024, 03:27 PM ET
- Jeff Legwold is a senior writer who covers the Denver Broncos and the NFL at ESPN. Jeff has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years, joining ESPN in 2013. He also assists with NFL draft coverage, including his annual top 100 prospects. Jeff has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999. He has attended every scouting combine since 1987.
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — With an already snug salary cap, the Denver Broncos made their choice this week about which pending free agent at outside linebacker they had room to keep.
The Broncos signed Jonathon Cooper to a four-year extension the team announced Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed, but a source told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that the extension is worth $60 million with $33 million guaranteed.
Cooper has been called one of the team’s high-effort players by coach Sean Payton and is second on the team in sacks with 5.5, just behind Nik Bonitto‘s six. The Broncos, tied for second in the league in sacks with 31, have 12 players with at least a half-sack over the first nine games.
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Cooper, a seventh-round pick by the Broncos in the 2021 draft, was poised to become an unrestricted free agent in March, as was fellow outside linebacker Baron Browning, a third-round pick the same year. The Broncos elected to sign Cooper over the weekend and trade Browning to the Arizona Cardinals on Monday for a 2025 sixth-round pick.
Cooper led the team in sacks last season with 8.5. He has played in 56 games over the past four seasons, including 40 starts, though his time with the Broncos began with medical uncertainty.
The Broncos knew Cooper had been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat in high school. Doctors later said it was Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a congenital heart defect that results in irregular or rapid heartbeat.
Cooper had two ablations in high school, procedures in which catheters are threaded through blood vessels to the heart as tissue in the heart is then scarred to block abnormal electric signals, restoring a normal heartbeat. He then played through the remainder of his prep career and five seasons at Ohio State without issues.
However, in the medical checks leading up to the 2021 NFL draft, it was discovered that Cooper needed another ablation. He received the news, he said, roughly 48 hours before the first round.
He had three separate eight-hour procedures shortly after joining the Broncos, missing some of the team’s offseason program that year before he was medically cleared and went on to play in 16 games as a rookie.
