Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us 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 brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team were unable to make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
