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Little went well for Josh Allen in a tough contest on Thursday evening versus the Texans.

And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 loss.

Allen took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.

“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a evening he was sacked 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 accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.

“When they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the opening two quarters. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently during the game.

It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was losing ground.”

Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.

Buffalo played for a second straight game without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their last game. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a team session.

“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” the coach noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we opted for the guys that provide the best chance.”

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

The quarterback was frustrated that the team were unable to execute down the stretch.

In the end, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”