Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 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 play and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped 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 absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
