Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
