Jonathon Cooper paused during an interview the other day in the Broncos locker room when teammate Nik Bonitto walked past.

“Nik Bonitto is one of the best players ever,’’ Cooper said as the fellow Denver outside linebacker laughed and continued walking.

Obviously, there was some exaggeration in what Cooper said about the second-year player. But check back later, and there just might be something to it.

“I firmly believe he has Pro Bowl and Hall of Fame potential,’’ said Roger Harriott, who coached Bonitto at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “He has that much athletic talent and a great work ethic.”

The 6-foot-3, 240-pound Bonitto is coming off his NFL breakout game, having 2½ sacks in last Sunday’s 31-28 win over Chicago in his first start of the season. The big one came when Bonitto blasted Bears quarterback Justin Fields, forcing a fumble that Cooper scooped up and returned 35 yards to tie the score 28-28 with 6:55 remaining.

That performance was so impressive by Bonitto, who had replaced Randy Gregory in the lineup, that the Broncos decided afterward to part with Gregory, who signed a five-year, $70-million contract in March 2022. The Broncos were ready to release Gregory if no trade partner could be found, but they ended up shipping him Friday to the San Francisco 49ers. They swapped sixth- and seventh-round picks in the 2024 draft and Denver agreed to pay roughly $10 million of the $11 million remaining on Gregory’s guaranteed base salary for this season.

“It feels good,’’ Bonitto said of now being a fixture in the lineup. “It’s a privilege to be a starter in the NFL. Not that many people get the opportunity to do that and I’m just taking advantage of it and just going out there and playing hard.”

Bonitto has 3½ sacks this season, tied for 10th in the NFL, and will look to add to that total when the Broncos face the New York Jets on Sunday at Empower Field at Mile High.

In a home game against the Jets last October, Bonitto broke into the sack column for the first time in his NFL career, getting half of one in a 16-9 Denver loss. But that turned out to be one of the few highlights of Bonitto’s rookie season after he had been taken out of Oklahoma with the No. 64 pick in the second round of the draft.

“I think he was very, very tentative and timid last year,’’ said his father, Vince Bonitto. “He was afraid to make mistakes. I think he was a little nervous last year and he played more robotic.”

Bonitto, 24, agreed with that assessment. He said there were plenty of growing pains during a season in which he had just 1½ sacks, started just one game and averaged 23.8 snaps from scrimmage in the 15 games he played.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was going out there and afraid to make mistakes. I just trying to make the most of my time on the field so I would go out there knowing that was I playing 10 plays a game and I didn’t want to mess up and have (coaches) not trusting me and all that stuff. … But now I’m playing the game like I’ve always known how. I’m going out there and not thinking and just playing.”

Vince Bonitto said he and Bonitto’s uncle, Andre Penn, were among those who talked to the edge rusher at length about playing more freely. Bonitto also spent the offseason working hard in the weight room to gain more strength.

“It’s night and day,’’ Vince Bonitto said of how his son is playing this season. “It’s refreshing to see. I’m super excited but at the same time not surprised. He’s been doing things like that ever since he was in pee-wee ball.”

Bonitto grew up in South Florida and it didn’t long to long for him to show off his athletic skills. OK, his father did say he wasn’t all that great playing for the West Pines Wildcats in the fourth grade but that he did start to blossom in the fifth and sixth grades.

“I had a bunch of sacks,’’ Bonitto said.

Bonitto excelled in more than just football. His father said that in the fifth grade, while playing for South Florida Hoopsters, Bonitto scored 49 of his team’s 54 points in a basketball state championship game.

Bonitto, a guard, would go on to play basketball through his junior season at St. Thomas Aquinas and he said he got scholarship offers from schools such as Florida, Wake Forest and Wichita State. Harriott said Bonitto “could have played in the NBA,’’ but his true love was football.

Harriott first coached Bonitto when he was in the eighth grade at the University School in Fort Lauderdale in 2013 and was playing varsity football. Because the school was kindergarten through 12th grade, Bonitto was eligible by Florida rules to play in games with players as many as four grades older than him.

“He was starting some games in the eighth grade at defensive end and competing for the same spot as Brian Burns, who was two grades ahead,’’ said Harriott, referring to the Carolina Panthers star edge rusher. “He was in the eighth grade competing with some of the most prominent players in the country and doing well.”

Harriott ended up taking a job at Florida Atlantic University before becoming head coach at his alma mater. He then had Bonitto as his star pass rusher at St. Thomas Aquinas when he was in the 11th grade in 2016 and 12th grade in 2017.

“He was so dynamic and he has a great work ethic,’’ Harriot said. “He’s an extremely meticulous and cerebral human being. And he has been blessed with extraordinary talent since he was a little kid. He’s strong, he’s fast, he’s long, he’s extremely athletic and he’s a nightmare for offensive tackles.”

When he was a senior at St. Thomas Aquinas, Bonitto was 6-3 and weighed just 215 pounds but his speed allowed him to quickly get to the quarterback. When he played at Oklahoma, he did beef up to his current weight of 240 pounds.

Bonitto said there have been coaches over the years wanting him to put on even more weight, but he has made it a point of not wanting to bulk up too much and lose some quickness. That strategy certainly worked at Oklahoma, where he was a second-team All-American in his final season of 2021.

“Knowing him at Oklahoma, just knowing the kind of player he was, the type of guy he was, he works hard and he makes plays all the time, explosive as they come,’’ said Broncos rookie wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr., who played with Bonitto on the Sooners in 2020 and 2021. “We used to do a 10-yard start time (drill) and he was the best one on the whole entire team, like over the receivers.”

Bonitto was the Broncos’ initial selection in the 2022 draft since they didn’t have a first-round pick. In the fifth round of that draft, they selected safety Delarrin Turner-Yell, his teammate at Oklahoma.

“Nik was very dominant at Oklahoma,’’ Turner-Yell said. “But I feel last year when he was coming in, he mainly was just trying to feel how things worked in the NFL. But now I think with a year under belt, he’s become really comfortable in the system and in the NFL.”

Bonitto was determined to take a big step this season. He vowed to become more aggressive, and he worked out diligently with a personal trainer during the offseason at EXOS, a notable facility in Phoenix, and in South Florida.

“It definitely took some time last year,’’ Bonitto said of adjusting to the NFL. “I wasn’t seeing things fast enough to play a large amount of snaps. So just being able to have a whole offseason to get even better has helped me a lot.”

Bonitto began to get in a groove in the second game this season, having two tackles for loss and two quarterback hits, which included a sack, against Washington. Then the week leading into the Chicago game he was told he would start.

Bonitto responding by making the play of the game in helping the Broncos (1-3) stop a three-game winning streak. His father was watching on television in South Florida.

“I was actually lying on my bed and then he had the strip sack and I just jumped up when I saw it,’’ said Vince Bonitto, who will attend Sunday’s game along with Bonitto’s brother, Jerrard. “I was super excited.”

In watching the game back, Turner-Yell was impressed to see to see Bonitto get to Fields in 2.5 seconds.

“That’s extremely fast,’’ Turner-Yell said. “That’s an extremely good get-off.”

Bonitto said it was “crazy” seeing his phone blow up after that game with messages from well wishers. But Bonitto said he soon realized he had to begin to focus on the Jets and then he got the bittersweet news Wednesday that the Broncos had decided to part ways with Gregory, 30.

The move showed that the Broncos are committed to Bonitto as a starter. But he said it was difficult learning that a mentor of his no longer would be with the team.

“It was really tough,’’ Bonitto said. “He was there at the beginning, from day one, just continually trying to prepare for a situation like this (of becoming an NFL starter),’’

Bonitto also regards Cooper, 25, as a mentor even though he is just one year older and is in his third season. Cooper seemingly also has the role of handling public relations for Bonitto.

“He has such a natural feel of the game that I’ve rarely ever seen in players,’’ Cooper said. “His instincts really take over and he’s able to create a lot of plays for us. … He’s really just coming into (his own), to be a really good elite edge rusher in the NFL.”

Perhaps Bonitto isn’t “one of the best players ever” yet. But Cooper believes he is well on his way.