Little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
