Little went right for Josh Allen in a tough contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 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 escaped and the defender rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
