🔗 Share this article

Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a tough game Thursday night versus the Houston 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.

The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.

After a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.

We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”

It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.

Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”

Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.

The Bills played for a second straight game without wideout Keon 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 defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.

“Nothing new. We are taking it day by day,” 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 opted for the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”

Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.

The quarterback was frustrated that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.

In the end, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”