Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks 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 backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
