Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and Anderson rose and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
