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Very little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.

Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a close defeat.

The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.

“We had a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four other times. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.

“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to play better.”

Allen was slow to get up after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times on Thursday.

It's unpleasant,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”

The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had two and a half tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.

Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup absent wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being late for a team session.

No change. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”

Shakir topped the Bills with eight receptions for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 rushing yards and a score.

The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays down the stretch.

“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”