Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a few personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued 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 without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are taking it day by day,” the coach noted. “I thought 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 went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
