Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
