Little went right 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.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
No change. We are 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 was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
