Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
“When they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated 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 unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
