Why did no one pull out to pass Dale Jr. in final laps at Talladega?

Sunday's Talladega race was very interesting to me. There were numerous occasions at the beginning, a third of the way through it, halfway through it and three-quarters of the way through it where it was three-wide eight rows deep.

I think it was pretty evident all weekend long that if you were going to win that race, you needed to figure out how to beat one of those Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets. We saw it in practice on Friday. We obviously saw it in qualifying with Hendrick not only winning the pole but qualifying in four out of the top five positions.

Probably my biggest disappointment Sunday had to be there near the end of the race when we were waiting for someone to try to make something happen. Darrell Waltrip and I were pretty vocal in our FOX NASCAR broadcast that if you were going to make your move, you couldn't wait until the final lap or two. You needed to do it earlier than that, but no one was willing to risk it.

Personally, I think the guy who needed to make the move was young Ryan Blaney. He was running third and had a fast race car. I know he and the team were walking a tightrope. The Wood Brothers don't run a full schedule and hadn't had a top-five finish since winning the Daytona 500 in 2011. I know Ryan wanted to get the first top five of his young career and didn't want to make a rookie mistake, but my point is they only were there to win, so why not go for it?

To me it was win or nothing. I just felt like he could be the guy to make the move, and had he, maybe Denny Hamlin would have gone with him. I mean, we don't know. Ryan didn't know and maybe even Denny didn't know at the time. So I was disappointed that we didn't see someone try it, and when we got down to two laps to go it was pretty much too late to try.

Sure, it looked like Jimmie Johnson, who was running second, was playing the role of blocker for his teammate, Dale Earnhardt Jr., so that Dale could punch his ticket into the Chase for the Sprint Cup. I have zero problem with that. Even if Jimmie would have gotten turned by another car, I still would have been OK with that because it's the risk you take when you decide to play blocker.

The other thing that stuck out to me was how emotional Earnhardt Jr. was after he won Sunday. I've seen him fired up and excited before in Victory Lane, but I just don't know that he's ever been that emotional. I don't know if it was because earlier in the week would have been Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s birthday, or Dale Jr.'s desire to win for the first time with his new crew chief, Greg Ives, or maybe it was because it's been almost 11 years since he had won at Talladega Superspeedway. Maybe it was the sum of all the parts, because that win sure meant a whole lot to Dale Jr.

I love restrictor plate-racing, and, yes, I would have loved to seen a little more action at the end. All in all it was a fun race, but I hate that it was the last FOX NASCAR restrictor-plate race for 2015.