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Little went right for Josh Allen in a frustrating game Thursday night against the Texans.

And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.

Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.

After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.

“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a night he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.

Whenever they pressure our QB a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to play better.”

Josh Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.

It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”

Allen lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and pursued him downfield to tackle 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 tardy to a squad gathering before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.

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

Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a score.

The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to execute in crucial moments.

In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever condition, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”