Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “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.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it isn't a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver 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 held out for the first series of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are taking it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
