Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game on Thursday evening versus the Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
