Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”
