The game was originally scheduled for UR’s Robins Stadium on Saturday afternoon, but the potential impact of Hurricane Florence caused a state of emergency to be declared in Virginia. As a result, SFU determined it wasn’t sending the Red Flash — named for a set of speedy backs in the 1920s — to Richmond.

Essentially, the Spiders could have agreed to come to SFU, or the game would have been canceled. UR chose to play, even if that meant having to bus 284 miles on Wednesday, and then retracing the steps after the game to reach home. Richmond requested a Thursday date at 5 p.m. so the Spiders would have a chance to arrive back in Richmond before the most intense portion of the storm reached central Virginia.

“Now that it’s over and we won, obviously it was worth coming up here,” UR coach Russ Huesman said. “But it was tough.”

Richmond scored its only two offensive TDs in the final quarter. When the Spiders, behind 27-23, took over at their 35 with 65 seconds left, “We just knew we had to make plays. It came down to us on offense, and we knew that we were the guys that the team was depending on,” Brissett said.

Johnson completed four passes on that drive, and the Red Flash (1-2) committed an interference penalty.