Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple myself. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
