Little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” 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 few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy 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 also being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
