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

And still he nearly managed to willing the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the final minute ended their hopes in a close defeat.

The quarterback endured back-to-back tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.

After a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.

We possessed a opportunity to win it there at the end,” Allen stated. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”

Proved difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a career-high eight times and pressured four additional instances. The QB passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers the previous week.

Whenever they pressure our QB 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”

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

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I need to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was going backwards.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. Another sack came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, 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 played for a second straight game without wideout Keon 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 the Patriots in the fifth week after also being delayed for a meeting.

No change. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott said. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it step by step. It was not that it was ignored, but we went with the guys that provide the best chance.”

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

The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills were unable to execute in crucial moments.

In the end, we must execute, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he said. “Whatever scenario and any circumstance, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”