Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine 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 unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
