Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.
The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.
We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
It was difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 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 healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.
Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.
No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the best chance.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.
Allen was disappointed that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”
