Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down 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 TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic 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’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack 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 asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
