Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. 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 was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
