Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
“When they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. 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 lead the Texans. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
