There are many lessons that can be learned from Dalton, the “world’s greatest cooler” from Road House.
Pain don’t hurt.
Take the biggest guy in the world, smash his knee and he’ll drop like stone.
If somebody gets in your face and calls you a c**ksucker, I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won’t walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can’t walk him, one of the others will help you, and you’ll both be nice. I want you to remember that it’s a job. It’s nothing personal.
I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.
However, one of his greatest lessons was never articulated in the film: that when the time comes, sometimes you just need to finish.
He never talked about finishing, but following how Dalton lived provides a pretty good example of this principle (it also provides a pretty good blueprint by which we should all aspire to live – other than practicing tai chi shirtless in grey sweats). Dalton spent most of the movie patiently inflicting just enough damage to keep the peace, but in the end, when he had to finish things he literally ripped that dude’s throat out. That is how you finish.
Looking at this weekend’s NFL action this weekend you could see that some teams took Dalton’s advice and some couldn’t. Some were able to finish, some weren’t. Some teams ripped their opponent’s throat out and others had a polar bear fall on them.
The Broncos certainly fall into ‘pinned under a polar bear’ category. A lackluster first half left them trailing the Raiders but after a long touchdown drive, a Wyoming-esque goal line stand (thanks to one of the worst coaching decisions I have seen by someone not named Lovie Smith – passing up a field goal to tie the game when his 3rd down play from the one-yard line lost 2 yards) and a long Brandon Stokley reception, the Broncos were on the 4 yard line with a chance to ice the game by going ahead by ten with 6 minutes to play. A good team (AKA: a playoff team), goes all Dalton here and rips the Raiders throat out by scoring the touchdown. Instead after two bad passes and a poor Knowshon run attempt, the Broncos settled for a field goal and a six-point lead.
Predictably, the Raiders marched down the field (mostly thanks to Louis Murphy not even attempting to catch a long pass and being bailed out by the refs with a pass interference penalty. Louis, Tim Tebow would be ashamed of you) and scored the go-ahead touchdown with less than a minute to play.
The Broncos have no excuse. They lost a game they should have won to an incredibly bad team. On the bright side, this was a total team loss, so you can’t say it will divide the locker room. The offense couldn’t score touchdowns or run to kill the clock and the defense gave up 240 yards rushing and a game-winning drive to Jamarcus Russell. We haven’t seen Russell carve up a defense with that much ease since he played Notre Dame in the 2007 Sugar Bowl.
Now it appears that the Broncos must win at Philadelphia next week (and beat the Chiefs at home in the final weekend) to have a shot at the playoffs. Winning in Philly should be no problem – look at how the Broncos dominated at Washington earlier this seas….err, nevermind.
The Broncos weren’t the only team that couldn’t finish this weekend. The Saints, after spotting the Cowboys a big lead Saturday night, attempted to comeback but fell short. Another total team failure, the Saints offense sputtered until the fourth quarter and ran out of time on the final drive thanks to the Saints defense being unable to stop the Cowboys offense on the previous drive until they had burned nearly 6 minutes off the clock.
Though the Cowboys shouldn’t be let off the hook completely, after missing a chip shot field goal that would have sealed the game kept the Saints alive a lot longer than they should have been.
At the polar opposite end of the Dalton-Throat-Ripping scale are the Indianapolis Colts. Faced by a motivated, desperate team that knows them well the Colts battled the Jags all game on Thursday night. However, when it was time to finish the game, the Colts did what they do. Peyton lofted a perfect pass to Reggie Wayne for the go-ahead points and then the defense got the game-clinching turnover in the final minute.
I like to think that when Peyton walks up to the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter he looks over at the defense and says: “I used to f**k guys like you in prison.” But that is probably just wishful thinking on my part.
We are now two weeks from the playoffs. Teams that really want to compete for a trophy in the first week of February should have by this time learned how to win a game. Not just outscore another team but really finish a game – score that touchdown to break the team’s spirit or take an insurmountable lead and get that finishing turnover or make that game-ending tackle. Each week, it seems like the list of teams capable of finishing gets smaller and smaller and that means the list of teams that we can trust to deliver in January gets smaller and smaller.
And if a team does ultimately fall short? Well, then they get to look forward to an entire city coming out of nowhere and blasting them.
As always, it all comes back to Road house.
