Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a close defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss 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 Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise 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 contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
