Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got find a way, 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 pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
“When they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left 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 remarked. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
