Very little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 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 isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
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 nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without receiver Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
