Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. 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 sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late 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 meeting.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
