Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” 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 we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “went a little numb” 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 personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. 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 the defender got up and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
