Very little went right for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
