Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a few personally. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
