Very little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently 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. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
