Little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
