Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created 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 possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed 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 quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle 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 asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
