Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it 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 must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better 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 two and a half sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant 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 the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are 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 led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
