Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever situation and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
