Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute 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 defense saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.
Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Josh Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
