Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.
Allen endured back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “We did a solid job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was fine 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 during the game.
It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was losing ground.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling 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.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the team were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
