Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “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 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
