Little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.
The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one 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 tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second straight game without receiver Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “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 give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and any condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
