Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game Thursday night versus the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was 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 Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
