Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 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 significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “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 tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
