Little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line 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 saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
