Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense saved us a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a tackle 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 frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
