Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating game Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “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 preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we must perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
