Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
