Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense saved us a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat 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 rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh 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 fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent 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 held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach 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 opted for the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
