Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, 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.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “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 guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
