Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a chance 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 few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for Allen to get anything going 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 TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
“When they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly 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 force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
