This is a story about a man, his tweets, and the perceived “hatred” of his rival that really isn’t.
Darnell Dockett certainly has kept things lively between the Cardinals and 49ers, recently jumping on something Niners tight end Vernon Davis said on Twitter about dominating opponents and
turning it into a back-and-forth about Davis, Adrian Wilson and the Cards/Niners rivalry.
Dockett was
backing up his man Wilson until some Niners’ fans got into the fray, letting
Davis lob an insult and
Dockett firing back. Dockett certainly hasn’t held back this offseason, talking a lot about getting another shot at the 49ers.
But here’s the thing, which Dockett laid out in a lengthy explanation in the locker room today following his workout: He wants to beat the 49ers. Bad. He’ll make that clear on Twitter often. Hate them, though? Not really.
“I don’t hate them,” Dockett said. “Actually I have a lot of respect for them. I remind my teammates all the time, when we’re out there running (in the offseason) and you’re tired, I tell ‘em, ‘Think about what it’s going to feel like in Monster Park in the third quarter and they are trying to run the ball down our throat.’ Guys who have been in that fight before, it’s like, bam, the switch turns on.”
Rather than pare down too much of what Dockett said, I’d rather let him tell the story.
– On the perception he hates the 49ers: “I am cool with a lot of their team. You don’t know that if you look at Twitter and you’ll be like, ‘Man, you really hate them.’ But I just feel like we are the best two teams in the division, a
lot of people say they are going to win the division, we won it the last two years … I know what type of games they will be. I’m not crazy. I think if they played every game like they played us, they’d be undefeated. I feel if we played every game with a certain intensity that we play (against) them, we’d be undefeated.”
– On losing to San Francisco: “If you lose to a team back to back and (the games) are so competitive and you know you’ll play your best game and they’ll play their best game and they beat you, you take that personal. Especially if you are a winner in your heart. … We lost (last year). They kicked our ass. It don’t matter how we lost. I don’t plan on losing to them again.”
– On hearing from 49ers’ fans on Twitter: “I love their fans because they’ve got some ride-or-die fans. I actually enjoy reading some of their fans’ tweets because they are really disrespectful and I actually wish some of our fans would be like that sometimes too. … They say, ‘We got all these Super Bowl wins.’ I just respond, ‘Ya’ll had Super Bowl wins before I even got in the league, I don’t care about that. That ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
– On Vernon Davis and having Adrian Wilson’s back: “Vernon, you see the trash he is talking, he and Adrian, they have their own vendetta against each other. But me? I’m cool with Vernon. I see him all the time. We’re from the same area (in Maryland), I just saw him this weekend. But I’m going to ride-or-die for my teammates too. I am as loyal as they come. I’m going to have my boy’s back, because he’s not on Twitter and I know if Adrian had been on Twitter he would have spoken up. Adrian was in the weight room the other day and I told him what Vernon said and all of a sudden, he’s got 525 pounds on the squat with no hesitation.”
– On what it’s like to play the 49ers: “They’ve got street dudes on that team, they’ve got dudes that don’t give a damn, they’ve got dudes who will curse, they’ve got dudes who are going to be disrespectful, they’ve got dudes who will hold, scratch, spit on you, talk (crap) to you, be dirty
– it’s a backyard fight. To me, I love those types of games. It’s like, ‘Let the games begin.”
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