Very little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up 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 questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
