Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to willing the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to top 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 tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup absent receiver 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 opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and any condition, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”
