Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow 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 asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
