JONATHON COOPER MORE MOTIVATED THAN EVER TO FINISH OHIO STATE CAREER STRONG AFTER MISSING FIRST FOUR GAMES WITH ANKLE INJURY
In the months leading up to his final season at Ohio State, Jonathon Cooper made it clear that he wanted to go out with a bang.
The No. 33 overall prospect in the recruiting class of 2016 when he arrived at Ohio State, Cooper was a starting defensive end for the Buckeyes for the entire 2018 season, but he acknowledged that his career hadn’t quite lived up to expectations thus far – and he wanted to change that.
“Even though I came in with this high expectation or being a five-star recruit and everything, I always prided myself on how hard I work,” Cooper said at Big Ten Media Days in July. “I was never patient. It was just finding that confidence in myself and knowing that I am one of the best defensive ends in the nation, and I just need to play like it.”
Cooper’s senior season, however, hit a significant setback before it even began.
During a practice in late August, less than two weeks before the season, Cooper was participating in an inside drill when another player rolled up on the outside of his ankle. After meeting with a team doctor, Cooper learned he had suffered a high-ankle sprain and would need to undergo surgery.
“What’s crazy is I didn’t even fall,” Cooper recalled this week. “So I got hurt, and I’m like limping off or whatever, but I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m good, I’m good.’ I go see the doc, doc’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna need surgery.’ So it was a shocking moment for me.”
Cooper’s recovery from that surgery forced the senior defensive end to miss the Buckeyes’ first four games of the season against FAU, Cincinnati, Indiana and Miami (Ohio). As he thought about the dwindling amount of time he has left in his Ohio State career, watching those games from the sidelines was tough for him to accept.
“It beat me up, man,” Cooper said. “I’m not gonna lie. It had me pretty low and pretty upset, just ‘cause I knew where I was at. I was playing my best football and it is my last year here and I wanted to go out and show the nation what I could do. But things happen. Things happen, and the only thing you control is what you can control.”
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