Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy 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 additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
