Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.
Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.
After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.
“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it isn't a smart way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was slow to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half sacks to lead the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a meeting.
“Nothing new. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”
Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to make plays in crucial moments.
In the end, we’ve got perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”
