Little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a good way to keep our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving 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 perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
