Little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
