Very little went right for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
