Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, 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. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
