Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 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 compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
