Very little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception 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 Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete 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 get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
