Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen 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 quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions 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.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
