Little went right for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. 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 awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
