Little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough contest on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need 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 “went a little numb” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
