Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
