Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing 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 loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”
Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen 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 isn't a smart way to keep our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was OK 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 on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack came when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”
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 couldn’t execute down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
