Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a few myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team were unable to make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
