Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant 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 additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
