Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said 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 contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without 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 held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
No change. We are taking it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was frustrated that the team were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
