Jonathan Cooper bit his girlfriend’s phone to pieces, got arrested, and then found scripture on Instagram

Jonathan Cooper, the Denver Broncos edge rusher who closed last season with a sack in the AFC Championship loss to the Patriots, spent a Thursday night last week doing something no defensive coordinator has ever drawn up on a whiteboard: biting a cell phone until it stopped working.

According to the arrest affidavit, Jonathan Cooper and his girlfriend were arguing about cheating allegations when she grabbed his phone, threw it across the room, then picked it back up to go through it. A scuffle followed. Cooper got the phone back, told her he was going to destroy hers, and then, by his own admission, bit it hard enough to cause what the affidavit calls “disabling damage.”

Both of them got arrested. Jonathan Cooper was booked in Douglas County around 2:38 in the morning on two counts of domestic violence and one count of criminal mischief. His girlfriend was booked on a domestic violence charge of her own.

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Here’s the part that matters before anybody gets carried away: the incident itself is murkier than the mugshot suggests. The responding officer wrote that conflicting statements and a lack of bruises or scratches added up to no probable cause for harassment or assault charges. The girlfriend alleged Jonathan Cooper lifted her up by the throat; the officer noted a small mark on her neck didn’t look consistent with the claim. Whatever happened in that apartment is going to a courtroom, not a comment section.

The one thing nobody is arguing about is the phone. Cooper admitted the phone. Cooper ate the phone.

Jonathan Cooper found God somewhere between the arrest and the plea hearing

This is where it turns into something I can actually write jokes about.

Days after the arrest, Jonathan Cooper opened Instagram and posted Ephesians 4:26-32 to his Stories. The highlighted line: “Do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger.” A verse about controlling anger, posted by a man arrested over an argument that ended with a destroyed phone.

Then he apologized. “I realize posting a Bible (sic) Quote right after something very serious happens does not just mean everything is okay,” he wrote, before apologizing to his family, his friends, and his community. He followed it with a second story: “I apologize. This situation is not who I am.”

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That is not a public relations plan. That is a man live-narrating his own court case.

A legal expert told Fox News the obvious thing every attorney alive would have said: stay off social media. Prosecutors can hold that apology up in front of a jury and ask why an innocent man felt the need to say sorry. Cooper’s lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, has a plea hearing scheduled for Monday — and now he also has his client’s Instagram confessional to explain.

The Broncos and the NFL both say they’re aware of it, which is league-speak for “we are quietly watching to see how big a problem this becomes.”

What the Jonathan Cooper situation actually is

Strip away the scripture and the legal noise and the math is simple. This is a player who signed a four-year, $60 million extension and piled up 31.5 career sacks, now famous from coast to coast for using his jaw as a phone-disposal unit.

He has the money. He has the production. He has the contract that says he’s one of the better pass rushers in the AFC. He also has a criminal mischief charge for a phone he bit so hard it qualified as a crime, and an apology already working against him before the case gets going.

The sacks aren’t what people are going to remember. Years from now, nobody recites his pressure numbers. They tell the one about the NFL edge rusher who looked at a smartphone, decided talking was beneath him, and went in teeth-first.

Ephesians says don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Cooper let it go down on a phone instead.