Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “We did a good job of hanging tough 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 night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
