Little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver 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 opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil 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 team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
