Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left 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 ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was again 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 the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
