Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough 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 eight times and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
