Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
