Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a few personally. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
