Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a good way to keep our quarterback healthy 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 OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without receiver 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 loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
