🔗 Share this article

Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest 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.

Allen 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 flipped a lateral to another teammate.

After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.

“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”

Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”

Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.

“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”

Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.

Buffalo played for a second straight game without receiver Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.

“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. 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 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.

The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.

In the end, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the situation and any condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”