No, Jonathon Cooper Was Not Drafted by the Denver Broncos in 2019 — He Went to Cleveland in 2021
“Jonathon Cooper was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the seventh round in 2019”
The argument in brief
The claim that Jonathon Cooper was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the seventh round in 2019 is false on two counts. Cooper, a defensive end out of Ohio State, was actually selected by the Cleveland Browns in the seventh round of the 2021 NFL Draft. Both the team and the year are wrong, and official NFL and Pro Football Reference records confirm it.
Why it spread
Draft details are notoriously hard to keep straight. Rounds, years, and teams blur together even for dedicated fans, and a claim that includes a specific round number sounds authoritative enough that most people will not bother to verify it. That false confidence is exactly what lets small factual errors travel far.
The claim is that Jonathon Cooper was a seventh-round Denver Broncos pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. That is false — and not just slightly off. It gets both the team and the year wrong.
According to Pro Football Reference's 2021 NFL Draft records and the NFL's own official draft tracker, Cooper was selected 228th overall by the Cleveland Browns in the seventh round of the 2021 draft. He is a defensive end who played his college ball at Ohio State before landing in Cleveland — not Denver.
To double-check from the other direction, Pro Football Reference's full record of the Denver Broncos' 2019 draft class shows no player named Jonathon Cooper anywhere on the list. He simply was not there. The 2019 draft and the Broncos are a dead end when it comes to Cooper.
The strongest version of this claim might lean on the fact that Cooper really was a seventh-round pick — that part is true. But a correct round does not save a claim that names the wrong team and the wrong year. Two out of three key facts being wrong makes this clearly misinformation, not a minor mix-up.
This kind of error spreads easily because most people do not have NFL draft history memorized. A claim that sounds specific — a round number, a team name, a year — feels credible even when the details are scrambled. If you see draft claims circulating, the fastest fix is a quick search on Pro Football Reference or NFL.com, both of which keep complete, free, publicly accessible draft records.
Sources
- Pro Football Reference - 2021 NFL Draft
Jonathon Cooper, a defensive end from Ohio State, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the seventh round (pick 228 overall) of the 2021 NFL Draft, not by the Denver Broncos in 2019.
- NFL.com - 2021 NFL Draft Tracker
The NFL's official draft records confirm Cooper was selected by Cleveland in 2021. There is no record of a Jonathon Cooper being drafted by Denver in 2019.
- Pro Football Reference - 2019 NFL Draft
A review of the Denver Broncos' 2019 draft picks shows no player named Jonathon Cooper was selected by the team in any round.