FOXBORO — Brandon McGowan grew up in Jersey City, N.J. And Orono, Maine, is nothing like Jersey City.

But that is where McGowan found himself in the summer of 2001, as a freshman at the University of Maine, the only school that still offered him a full football scholarship after he missed all but four games of his senior season at Lincoln High due to an ankle injury.

“So I packed my bags and went 10 hours up north,” McGowan recalled on Monday.

Initially, the man now known for being a hard-hitting safety and the surprise standout of this season for the Patriots was homesick in Maine, ready to leave the rural campus for the city he knew well. His family may not have had much money — the lights were turned off once or twice when he was growing up — and Jersey City has its share of problems, but that was familiar.

The bucolic campus where so few of his classmates looked like him — only 1 percent of Maine’s student body identifies as African-American — was not.

Not surprisingly, McGowan found his comfort at Maine with his teammates and on the field.

“Once I settled in and started vibing with my teammates, that’s what kept me there — Agean Robinson, he’s still one of my good friends to this day, Stephen Cooper (now a member of the Chargers), Jarrod Gomes…that’s what helped me out a lot up there,” McGowan said. “If I didn’t have them, I would have shot right back to Jersey.”

McGowan thrived on the football field, starting all but one of his 34 games. But despite his success, Division I-AA (now FCS) players aren’t often drafted by NFL teams. Chicago gave McGowan a chance as a rookie free agent, and he earned a spot on the 53-man roster, first as a special-teamer and then as a member of the Bears’ secondary.

Injuries stunted his progress. A knee problem at the end of his rookie season meant he began the next year on the physically unable to perform list. No sooner did he return to the field, he ruptured his Achilles, which ended his season. He was healthy in year three and played in 14 games, recording 80 tackles and two interceptions.

But last year found him in physical rehab again, out for the season after two games with another ankle injury.

He hit the free-agent market, and when most teams took a look at his medical history they took a pass.

New England, Cleveland and Tampa Bay all showed interest. McGowan figured the Patriots were the best opportunity for him, and he is just the type of free agent the Pats like. If things don’t work out, such players don’t carry a high price tag. If things do, you get a solid contributor for short money.

McGowan just wanted to play football. That he is part of a winning team — the Browns and Buccaneers are a combined 2-14 this year — is “over the top.”

In McGowan, Bill Belichick got a player with an unabashed love of football, a playing style McGowan terms as “reckless,” and a player able to defend some of the best tight ends in the NFL — witness the job he did on future Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez in Week Three.

After just one game, McGowan had shown enough to unseat incumbent starter James Sanders at free safety.

New England’s defensive scheme is completely different from the Tampa-2 he played exclusively in Chicago, yet McGowan has excelled quickly. In his seven starts, he’s recorded 49 tackles (36 solo), 5 pass breakups and 3 forced fumbles.

“They let me do a lot more here,” he said. “They move me around a lot. They let me play with my strength, and that’s getting to the ball.”

Often playing close to the line of scrimmage and tracking tight ends, McGowan is playing the “big nickel” or safety/linebacker hybrid role Rodney Harrison previously occupied.

“I love it,” McGowan said, his eyes widening. “You have to love it as a safety when you’re always in the mix, always tied up with someone. Anything hands-on, I like.”

McGowan credits the Bears’ constant emphasis on ball disruption for his three forced fumbles. Every day in practice there, he said, defensive players worked overtime at trying to strip the ball away.

McGowan is also a cut-up, and has found kindred spirits in backfield mates Brandon Meriweather and Shawn Springs. He offers that he very much likes the men he plays with, and once again, his teammates are a big part of the good time he is having in another new place, part of the reason he loves football.

“You’re just out there, you get to hit people, being around teammates, having fun,” he said when asked why he loves the game. “Football is fun, period, to me. When you make it fun, everything just follows. It’s easy when it’s fun.”