Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB 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 loss to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second straight game without 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 earlier benched for the first series of a loss 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,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re 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.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
