Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times 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 pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and 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 succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
