Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated 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 on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We are approaching it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
