Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high 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 hit our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
