Very little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, 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 another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
