Very little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played 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 last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching 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 was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
