🔗 Share this article

Very little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.

And still he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.

The quarterback endured back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.

After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.

We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a win over Tampa Bay last week.

Whenever they hit our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it isn't a good way to keep our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”

The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.

The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.

“Nothing new. We’re just taking it day by day,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”

Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.

The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute in crucial moments.

In the end, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”