Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
