Little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. 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 pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game without wideout Keon 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 New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
