Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating game Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
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 landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
