Arizona defensive tackle Darnell Dockett has a 10-hour appointment Tuesday with a tattoo artist in Mesa, Ariz. He hopes his new body art celebrates a Super Bowl victory.
TAMPA. Fla. — Darnell Dockett of the Arizona Cardinals will play defensive tackle against the Pittsburgh Steelers for three or four hours Sunday, but he has something scheduled for Tuesday that could take more than twice the time.
The ferocious Dockett is a compelling but contradictory personality.
“He came by and basically set up a 10-hour appointment,” Sage O’Connell, a tattoo artist in Mesa, Ariz., said in a telephone interview. “Darnell knows what he wants, and he’s easy to work with.”
What Dockett craves is a new tattoo to commemorate a victory in Super Bowl XLIII at Raymond James Stadium. O’Connell has drawn murals on Dockett’s back, legs, neck, chest and arms, but there is still some empty space.
“Put it on the bottom of my feet,” Dockett said. “I’m going to find a spot even if I’ve got to get it on my forehead. If I win the Super Bowl, I will get that tattoo. That’s something to definitely put on your body.”
Dockett has emerged as a compelling but contradictory personality in this year’s title game, a self-proclaimed joker who also speaks with searing sensitivity about serious subjects, like the murder of his mother.
Dockett has fueled Arizona’s defense by playing on the edge between inspirational effort and self-destructive flamboyance. While quarterback Kurt Warner is the team’s personification of Boy Scout virtue, Dockett could be the alter ego. In recent days, Dockett has bared his body and shared his soul.
“I’m fascinated with skulls,” he said, pointing to tattoos. “I’ve got one, two, three, four, five. I’ve got two demons on my chest, both of them coming from flames.”
Dockett and O’Connell say they are most proud of Dockett’s back. It includes a portrait of his mother, murdered by a gunshot to the head. She sold drugs to support three children by three absentee fathers, Dockett said. He discovered her body when he was 13.
“I would give up all this to have my mom back,” said Dockett, 27, a five-year veteran who had 49 tackles and 4 sacks this season. “I’d go back to the streets.”
Paradoxically, her death helped make him an elite athlete. “Crazy as it may sound, whoever killed my mom gave me the biggest blessing,” he said.
Another portrait shows his father, who died of cancer four months after his mother died. “That’s the only funeral I’ve ever been to when I didn’t shed a tear,” Dockett said.
He resented his father, Dockett said, in part because he never called to wish him a happy birthday.
His back also shows a portrait of his grandfather and the skyline of Atlanta, where Dockett grew up. Above the buildings flies a helicopter.
“I used to get chased by the police,” Dockett said. “They used to bring the helicopter out.”
One arm shows a sexy woman he calls his girlfriend, a fictional character. “She’s the only one that I trust,” Dockett said. “She can’t go nowhere. She’s always in my eye distance. I actually designed her face and everything.”
On his right forearm is a poem that Dockett wrote to his uncle, Kevin Dockett, who disciplined and raised him in his teenage years near Washington. It says in part, “When the odds were against me, beside me you stood ... blood is thicker than water.”
Dockett wrote it in college while collecting roadside trash on a work crew in Florida, part of a community-service obligation after he pleaded no contest to the theft of athletic clothing while a student-athlete at Florida State.
T. K. Wetherell, the president of Florida State, also took a tough-love approach to Dockett, scolding him harshly in an office meeting. In college, Wetherell said, Docket experienced “cultural shock” on a campus unlike his previous residences.
“He had a lot of growing up to do,” Wetherell said in a telephone interview. “The university was bigger than one person. He was a small fish in a big pond. He finally got it figured out.”
Some of Dockett’s trouble came on the field. The Florida Gators accused him of intentionally injuring the leg of running back Earnest Graham by twisting it and of trying to step on the hand of quarterback Rex Grossman. Offensive tackle Max Starks was a Gator then and is a Steeler now.
“He’s still the same Darnell Dockett,” Starks said, adding that Dockett would try to intimidate Sunday with “a verbal battle.” Of their college grudge, Starks said: “No comment on that one. Still under review on that one. Still have some feelings about that.”
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