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Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.

Yet he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.

Allen took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.

Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.

“We had a chance to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”

It was difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers last week.

Whenever they pressure our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was questioned about being contacted so frequently on Thursday.

It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a few myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson rose and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.

The Bills competed for a second straight game without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was tardy to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a defeat to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.

“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it day by day,” McDermott said. “I thought he had a better week, but we are handling it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”

Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.

The quarterback was frustrated that the team couldn’t execute in crucial moments.

In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “Whatever situation and any circumstance, we need to find a way, and we came up short.”