Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a smart way to keep our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch 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 delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “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 opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
