Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
