🔗 Share this article

Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.

Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.

Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.

After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.

We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.

“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”

The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.

The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.

No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that give us the optimal opportunity.”

Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 yards and Cook had 116 rushing 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 execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to find a way, and we came up short.”