Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “We did 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 Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott 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 went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
