Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game 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 sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott noted. “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 guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
