Very little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
