Very little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “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 field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
