FOXBOROUGH — After Jerod Mayo was lost for the season a third of the way through the schedule last year, the job of signal-caller for the Patriots’ defense fell to second-year linebacker Dont’a Hightower.
A leader who called plays while he was at Alabama, the on-field coordinator for one of the best defenses in college football, Hightower wasn’t a stranger to the role.
But he quickly found himself in strange positions on the field — and he had no one to blame but himself.
“It’s really kind of hard to explain, but I was trying to make calls that were more suited for [Mayo] as opposed to me,” Hightower said last week. “Sometimes it put me in a bad situation, maybe it was a stretch outside, and I did it, but Mayo’s a lot faster than me, so he’s always allowed to make that play.”
Hightower was trying too hard to be someone he isn’t. He isn’t Jerod Mayo, and it took him a few weeks to realize that even if he had inherited one of Mayo’s responsibilities, he still had to play like Dont’a Hightower.
Hightower knew he didn’t feel comfortable trying to be Mayo, and when he saw the proof on screen, he knew he had to make a change.
“Watching myself on film and knowing that’s not the way I play, that’s not the style I play” led to him approaching things differently, Hightower said. “I like to play downhill and be physical, and the way I was playing was definitely not suitable to me, and therefore it showed on film.”
Once he figured that out, Hightower’s play took off: Over the final four weeks of the regular season, he totaled 47 tackles, two quarterback hits, and a pass deflection. He finished with a team-high 137 tackles, with five quarterback hits, a sack, and three pass deflections.
He also rebuilt his confidence.
It was a difficult time, but Hightower now looks back on those months as a great learning experience, one that helped him grow a great deal in a relatively short amount of time.
“It forced me to step up . . . a lot, not having those two big anchors [Mayo and Vince Wilfork, lost for the season in Week 4, two weeks before Mayo] that have been there for a long time,” Hightower said. “The situation that we were in, it’s not usually like that, sometimes you get those reps in practice where you pull a couple of starters out and do that, but I just feel like it helped me a lot, made me grow up a lot faster, to realize a lot more about being a leader.”
This season, Hightower has been rewarded, if having even more responsibility can be considered a reward. In his third season, he gets to play all over the front seven, stopping the run, rushing the quarterback, dropping back into coverage, on the line of scrimmage and off.
“Dont’a has definitely been making some great plays for us early in the season,” said fellow 2012 first-round pick Chandler Jones. “And I feel like that’s a credit to his work ethic and what he did this offseason. He’s been helping us in the pass rush as well, he has two sacks already. He’s doing a good job. He’s coming around, and a player like Dont’a, that’s something you expect out of him is great play, and I expect to see that week in and week out from him.”
When he was drafted, the combination of Hightower’s intelligence and versatility, plus Bill Belichick’s defense (Hightower played for Belichick friend Nick Saban in college) seemed like a match made in heaven, and indeed, the Patriots moved up four spots to make sure they got Hightower, as they had with Jones.
“He’s played multiple positions for us,” Belichick said. “He’s played off the line, inside on the guard, on the tackle, and played on the line on the tight ends, played down. [He] did that in college, did some sub rushing in college, played [strongside linebacker]. Then when [Rolando] McClain left, he moved inside and played [middle linebacker].”
Belichick knew Hightower could handle different roles when he drafted him, and that has included being able to play all downs.
“I think the big thing for a player like Dont’a is his ability to play on third down — his ability to cover and rush the passer, which gives your defense a lot of flexibility,” Belichick said. “He’s a guy that you really want on the field on third down for the number of different things he can do. I wouldn’t say that’s always the case with linebackers like him, inside linebackers.
“But that’s what makes him a really good player. He’s good on all downs, but he gives you a lot of versatility and can also play on fourth down for us. We haven’t used him as much in that role because of his expanded role defensively but he was a good fourth-down player for us his first year, and even last year at times on the punt team.”
Hightower’s ability to be effective in so many ways has freed up Mayo for more opportunities to play downhill, which in turn provides another way for the defense to give an offense multiple looks.
“You have guys that can play a lot of different positions and do a lot of things on this defense, so when you have people like that, it opens your playbook to anything,” Wilfork said. “It makes it so hard for an opponent to try and key and say, ‘Well, that guy, he’s not rushing’ or ‘He’s going to always be dropping’ or ‘He’s going to always be three-technique’ — it makes it hard for guys to identify what that guy is doing, and I think we bring a lot to the table with guys like that, with Jamie [Collins] and Mayo and [Hightower], Chandler, and Rob [Ninkovich].
“You name it, we have guys that can go back and forth to cover and rush and get drops, so it just makes our defense a lot more special. But it starts with everybody knowing what they’re doing. I tip my hat to all of those guys, because one week it’s one thing, the next week it’s another, and they do a real good job of coming to work, identifying what they are that week, and going out there and playing, and it makes us better as a defense.”
Monday night, it will be on Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith to figure out where Hightower is and guess his responsibility.
“Offenses don’t know if I’m dropping or if I’m covering, they don’t know what’s going on, so that opens up space for everybody else,” Hightower said. “When they’re trying to zero in on what I’m doing, that means somebody is on the other side getting a sack or getting a pick, or they don’t really know what coverage it is or what’s going on.
“I feel like that helps me and that’s what’s elevated my game.”
Shalise Manza Young can be reached at syoung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shalisemyoung.