Very little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered 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 surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling 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 Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
