Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest Thursday night against the Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
