Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss 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 healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys 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 touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
