Very little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott 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 give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
