Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they pressure our quarterback a dozen 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 isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“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.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
