Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy 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 tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left 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 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 sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
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 team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
