Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
