Little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
