Little went right for Josh Allen in a tough game Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued 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 without 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 benched 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 approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
