Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to keep our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
