Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
