CHARLOTTE — Clemson’s 40-14 Homecoming win over Stanford last season almost didn’t happen.

With Hurricane Helene having rolled through the Upstate on that Thursday night, the Cardinal had a number of travel issues, including a flight delay of more than 24 hours, and did not arrive in town until less than 24 hours before kickoff.

However, despite the issues, senior tight end Sam Roush insists none of the off-the-field adversity leading up to the game had any impact on its outcome.

“You can say what you want about that, but I’ll never use that as an excuse for a poor performance,” Roush told The Clemson Insider. “When the ball rolls on the field, you got to be ready to play. I don’t care what kind of travel issues you have. Like, oh, I don’t have my lucky necklace or my lucky undershirt. It doesn’t matter, right? It’s about what can you do when the ball gets snapped.”

Roush went as far as saying that things are just different in the south when it comes to college football.

“Yeah, we did have some travel issues,” Roush said. “I think we ended up flying in on Friday. I think my parents got down real late, like right before the game, because there was some kind of hurricane. But nothing gets in the way of football in the south.”

“But you got to have accountability, right? I mean, yeah, it’s unfortunate, but you can’t let yourself use stuff like that as an excuse and you start negotiating with yourself about the price. I mean, in your mind, you don’t want to leave stuff up to chance.”

Despite not playing very well and turning the ball over three times, Stanford kept it competitive until late in the third quarter. Not to mention, starting quarterback Ashton Daniels went down with an injury late in the second half.

The Cardinal did manage to rush for more than 230 yards that night, but only managed 125 passing yards. And when Roush thinks back on the things that went wrong in that loss, those are the things he remembers, not any of the issues created by the storm.

“Clemson’s a good team,” Roush said. “We struggled a little bit. If I remember correctly, we had a tough time moving the ball in the run game, and we weren’t getting much going in the passing game. I think our game plan was to run the ball, and we didn’t really get that done.”

Photo courtesy of Jim Dedmon/Imagn Images