Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game Thursday night versus the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top 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 figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of 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 remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without receiver Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
