It's cool man, it's what we're all here for - to lean.
It's all about exhaust velocities and the effect they have on head flow. If you let all of that energy pass without restriction, intake air/fuel mixture will not "dwell" or linger around and through the exhaust ports long enough for effective surface -> air heat transfer. That's the big killer. Everything else is curable with a proper ECM flash or Memcal update in the older rigs, like mine.
EDIT: Gotta remember, these left the factory as reliable, rock steady truck engines that run happily on regular pump gas. They generate great torque at sedate engine speeds, and though pressed, not really meant for continuous high speed operation. If you're going for a little more performance, the bolt on stuff works to a point. After you breech that point, time to think of complete engine mods, swapping stuff out of the bay or what some adventurous folks do - swap for the infamous small block V-8's and build them up to speed and power.
I turned a relatively tourqey, gas guzzling Ram 1500 into a decent street racer once, but it took all sorts of tricks in addition to just plain cat-back and intake mods to get it right. Dropped the dough to get matched flow injectors, beefier volume fuel pump, the performance DCM (and three different flashes until it ran right on pump premium fuel), cam, rear-end gearing, tranny toughening and enhanced cooling in to handle the increased engine output. Luckily, Dodge didn't make too much distinction between factory built engines and thier A-block crates making powerful, small block v-8 mods really easy. I was about to rebuild the entire bottom end of the crank and rods to really toughen things up some, but ended up selling off the truck for $7,500 more than I originally paid to cover a really rough spont in my life. I still miss that truck. *sniff* I'm content with my Blazer though, and try as I might - getting formidable power out of it is going to take considerable work and a few friend's favors that hve garages I can borow on weekends to get it all done right.