Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
