Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen endured consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe 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 sluggish to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
