Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.
“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”
Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We’ve got to play better.”
Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt early in the third.
Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a team session.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Shakir led the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”
