Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. 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.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better 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 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 couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
