Broncos’ Jonathon Cooper hopes to ‘exploit’ Patriots’ Will Campbell matchup

Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel greeted rookie Will Campbell in the tunnel on Sunday with a couple of slaps on the heart, a hearty pat on the back, and a swipe across the chin. The sentiment, as New England’s fanbase took it, seemed clear: Keep your head up.

“I need to play better,” Campbell said after New England’s win over Houston, as reported by MassLive.

Campbell, the fourth overall pick in the 2025 draft, has had a rookie year of bruising others and being bruised himself. The latter has happened more often, more recently. In a 28-16 win over a dominant Texans defensive line, Campbell surrendered four quarterback pressures and two sacks, according to Pro Football Focus.

At least one pass rusher, out in Denver, appears to notice.

“I mean, he’s a rookie,” Broncos OLB Jonathon Cooper told The Denver Post. “It’s his first year. So, you gotta exploit that.”

There are few obvious cracks in the armor of a top-three Patriots offensive unit, heading into Sunday’s AFC championship in Denver. Campbell is one, a talented rookie out of LSU who has allowed nine pressures in his last two games (tied with the Bills’ Dion Dawkins for the most pressures allowed of any tackle in the playoffs, according to PFF). So are other pieces across New England’s front.

The Patriots surrendered a pressure rate of 38.3% in the regular season — sixth-highest in the NFL, according to Next Gen Stats. This didn’t particularly impact MVP candidate Maye. But New England’s second-year quarterback has taken the most sacks of any quarterback in the playoffs; his completion percentage has sunk below 60% in two postseason games, and Maye has fumbled a whopping six times.

Enter Cooper and edge partner Nik Bonitto, part of a Broncos pass rush that helped force Bills quarterback Josh Allen into four turnovers in the AFC divisional round.

“It’s so fun to watch him win and keep his eyes down, and to slow down and get the football,” Broncos defensive coordinator Vance Joseph said Thursday on Bonitto, who stripped Allen twice in the Broncos’ win. “That’s the finishing process for all the great rushers, man.”

Bonitto, voted a finalist Thursday for the AP Defensive Player of the Year, has gotten back the sack column in his last two games after a relative drought. Cooper, though, has been wandering in the desert without a sack for months. He hasn’t recorded a solo takedown since Week 9 against Houston, and finished the regular season with eight sacks after starting it with seven in his first nine games.

That’s partly due to increased situational emphasis on cage-rush principles across the second half of the year, as Joseph often prefers to squeeze mobile quarterbacks inside the pocket rather than give them lanes to escape. They’ll do it again on Sunday against New England, as Maye finished with the fourth-most rushing yards of any quarterback in the NFL this season.

Did Cooper feel like he could’ve won more often with speed rushes, across the back half of this year?

“I feel like – almost every time,” Cooper said. “Almost every time. I mean, you can go out there and run upfield and get behind the quarterback and all of that stuff, like a lot of these rushers do that looks pretty. But all you’re doing is opening up that B-gap, and giving a QB a better lane to either scramble or make a good pass or whatever.