Reuters

Cardinals defensive tackle Darnell Dockett is in a good mood now, digging his new coach and joking that Twitter-sensation beauty queens aren’t his type.

It wasn’t always this happy.

According to Dan Bickley of the Arizona Republic, Dockett was prepared to ask for a trade if Ken Whisenhunt had remained head coach.

Now with Bruce Arians in his place and defensive coordinator Ray Horton gone, Dockett thinks he’s going to have a chance to flourish again.

“[Arians] told me he is going to put me in my regular position that I had been playing over the years, [when] I was a dominant force in the middle,” Dockett said. “That got me fired up right away because I’ve been just looking for another opportunity to do what I do best, and that’s go out and dominate games. . . .

“I never wanted to be an Albert Haynesworth. I never wanted to be one of those guys who will get paid a lot of money and get into the media and [complain] about the position and things like that. I just sucked it up [under Horton]. I just did my best at a position that I was never really great at. But again, I just never wanted to be one of those guys, and I just wanted to put the team first. And I wasn’t going to let my selfish ways get involved with our team. I sacrificed.”

While that sounds magnanimous, the Cardinals defense was pretty good with Dockett in the role he was in. And while some of his recent remarks sound playful enough, others saw them as signs of immaturity.

After Brent Musberger went ga-ga over Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend during the BCS championship game, Dockett sent her messages on Twitter asking her if she wanted to go to a strip club together and eat chicken wings.

“If I really wanted to get this girl, there’s a bunch of different ways I’d have went about it,” Dockett said, insisting he was joking. “And I would have got her if I really wanted her. But I don’t think she’s my type.

“I’m not into the thinner girls, and the modeling thing like that. I like ’hood chicks. I like girls with a couple of stab wounds and bullet holes, been knocked up a few times. . . . I like girls who have bad credit when they’re 21.”

And he apparently likes Bruce Arians too, though it’s unclear which of those categories his new coach falls into.