Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like 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.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I’ve got 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 quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a team session.
No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
