Very little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. 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 many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it one day at a time. 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 Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
