Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense saved us a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James 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 perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
