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Very little went right for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.

Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a close loss.

The quarterback took back-to-back tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.

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

We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and we didn’t.”

Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay last week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

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

“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I found myself 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. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.

The Bills competed for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after additionally being late for a team session.

“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”

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

Allen was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.

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