Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
“When they hit our QB a dozen 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 isn't a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine 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 said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again 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 the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
