Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet 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.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.
After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “We did a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it isn't a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
