Hightower and Collins Ready to Take Dynamic Duo Act Worldwide

If you chose to listen to the NBC broadcast feed during last week’s Patriots/Ravens’ game, there’s no way you could have missed analyst Cris Collinsworth’s enthusiastic praise of the Pats second-year linebacker Jamie Collins.

“I think Jamie Collins can be as good a player as there is this league,” he said, among other plaudits.

It’s not the first time Collinsworth has expressed his affection for Collins and the way he plays the game. And with the Patriots continuing to advance in the playoffs, combined with their already high profile, this is prime time for Collins and his partner in linebacker power Dont’a Hightower to take their emergence on the national stage to the rest of the world.

One more win and that’s exactly where they’ll be.

It’s difficult to fathom exactly how Collins and Hightower would become such an integral component to a potential championship defense given the way each started the season. Hightower was playing a lot of traditional outside linebacker, lining up wide, standing up and rushing the quarterback. He recorded a couple of sacks, a handful of QB hits and several hurries in that role before missing two games with a knee injury suffered on that lost night in Kansas City. While he was out, Jerod Mayo went down for the season for the second year in a row. Hightower returned for the Pats’ next game, a Thursday-nighter against the Jets in which he looked fresh and played well but also marked one of the team’s weakest defensive efforts of the season. Given some of his struggles from 2013 after Mayo went down, it was more than fair to wonder what would become of the defense at the linebacker level.

Meanwhile Collins, who showed flashes of raw but powerful potential as his rookie season wore on (particularly in the playoffs against – ding ding ding!!! – the Colts), got off to slow start. But you could almost see him figuring things out on the field as the Pats got hot in October, merging his freakish athleticism with an understanding of the game and the Pats’ scheme on a weekly basis to the point where he could be rushing the quarterback, manning the middle of the field, covering a tight end and executing an A gap run blitz to perfection on consecutive plays.

I was too low on Jamie Collins coming out of S.Miss. Knew he was a freak but didn’t think he’d be this good of an all-around player.

— Todd McShay (@McShay13) January 11, 2015

And just like that, these two young pups (veteran defensive tackle Vince Wilfork referred to the pair as “like my younger brothers or my kids grown up” earlier in the week), are spearheading the Patriots’ defensive front straight toward the Super Bowl.

“That’s my guy, man. That’s my linebacker brother,” Collins said of Hightower this week as the Pats prepared for Sunday’s AFC Championship Game showdown with the Indianapolis Colts. “We do a lot of things together. We have to go into the game with certain things on our minds the same way. We’re on the same page.”

Hightower, the Pats second first-round pick after Chandler Jones back in 2012, came into his own after Mayo went down and he was handed the keys to the defense. He led the Pats to four straight dominant defensive performances, including the 43-21 win over Denver in early November, and played one his best games of the season in the near miss against the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving weekend. After missing that Sunday night thriller in San Diego with a shoulder ailment suffered against the Packers, he returned for the division showdowns against the Dolphins and Jets looking like the same dynamic, every-down player he turned into earlier in the season. It wasn’t long before he’d generated some Pro Bowl discussion.

“I’m just out there doing what’s asked of me by my teammates and coaches,” Hightower said. “I think I’ve done a decent job getting everyone lined up and ready to go. I have a lot of help around me. Jamie, he takes a lot of stress off me. We have great chemistry together. We know how each other plays. We know what each other’s gonna do before we do it.”

Hightower, who glides through the Patriots’ locker room with a regular smile, stopping to chat with and high-five one teammate after another, is being a little modest when he describes his performance this season as “decent.” Wilfork, who Hightower cited as a major influence on his development, had no problem being more effusive in regard to both of the Pats young linebackers.

“A lot of credit goes to those guys,” Wilfork said. “From taking the coaching to taking it upon themselves to be better football players, smarter football players and understanding the game the way it needs to be played. And as a backer, especially in this defense, you’re sort of the quarterback of the defense. Those guys rose to the occasion this year. They’ve done a phenomenal job for us. It just says a lot, how focused they are. They’ve done a great job and they’re going to continue to do a great job.”

You’ll forgive the Colts if they’re a bit uneasy about facing Collins and Hightower. Both have posted some bigtime performance against Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis offense. Collins was all over the field when the two teams met at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday Night Football in November. And again, his play in last season’s divisional round matchup at Gillette Stadium is what got him noticed by Collinsworth and other national observers in the first place.

Hightower also figured prevalently into both the November meeting, when he managed two hits on Luck to go with three hurries, a pass breakup and five tackles. Then, there was last year’s playoff showdown, when he managed this.

You can bet Luck, the Colts’ offensive line and their pass protecting running backs are seeing these plays and plenty of other pieces of film starring Hightower and Collins in their sleep. But will it matter? These two are operating at a near All-Pro level years at the tender ages of 24 and 25 respectively. Imagine what they’ll be doing when they hit their primes.

The rest of the football watching world will know by then. The stage on which Hightower and Collins perform keeps growing. Luckily for the Patriots, so does the level of their play.

“We’ve just got to keep maintaining and working toward being the best we can be,” said Collins. “It’s not easy. But it feels good to be near to the top and competing for an AFC championship. We’re going to enjoy it and try to take advantage of the opportunity.”