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Very little went well for Josh Allen in a disappointing contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.

And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.

The quarterback endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.

We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was sacked a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.

“When they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to compete and it isn't a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”

Josh Allen was slow 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 questioned about being hit so many times during the game.

It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.

Buffalo played for a second straight game without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.

No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re taking it one day at a time. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that give us the best chance.”

Shakir topped the Bills 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 make plays down the stretch.

“Ultimately, we must execute, and we failed to succeed of that this evening,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”