Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
