Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was OK 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 said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute 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 situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
