Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach 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 keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a few myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
