Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo 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 down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
