Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep 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 opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
