Josh Allen Taken Down Eight Times as Late Pickoff Dooms Bills in Defeat to Houston
Very little went right for Josh Allen in a disappointing game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.
Yet he came close to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with under half a minute left.
We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked 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 win over Tampa Bay the previous week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic 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 improve our performance.”
Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”
The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson 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 downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
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 couldn’t execute in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”