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Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a disappointing game 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 last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.

The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.

After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, a Texans defender intercepted the quarterback's pass at the 9-yard line with under half a minute left.

“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four other times. Allen passed for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our quarterback healthy for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”

Allen was sluggish to get up after a sack in the first half. He indicated he was OK and that his left shoulder “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so frequently during the game.

It's unpleasant,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at disposing of the football. Too many times, I was going backwards.”

Allen lost 70 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 nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt early in the third.

Buffalo competed for a second straight game absent receiver Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a defeat to New England in Week 5 after also being delayed for a team session.

No change. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we are handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”

Khalil Shakir led the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a touchdown.

The quarterback was disappointed that the team were unable to make plays down the stretch.

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