Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
