Little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
