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Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest on Thursday evening against the Texans.

Yet he came close to driving the Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.

Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.

After a false-start penalty led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds left.

We possessed a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay the previous week.

Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”

Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently during the game.

It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”

Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and Anderson got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.

Buffalo competed for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.

No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that give us the best chance.”

Khalil Shakir led the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.

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

“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”