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Little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Houston Texans.

And still he came close to willing the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.

The quarterback endured consecutive sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but the Bills (with seven wins) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

After a false-start penalty created a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock intercepted the quarterback's throw at the Houston 9 with under half a minute remaining.

“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the conclusion,” Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit saved us a few instances. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for the signal-caller to establish rhythm on a evening he was sacked a personal-worst eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after accounting for six touchdowns in a victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.

Whenever they hit our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach Sean McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to improve our performance.”

Josh Allen was slow to rise 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 awkwardly. He was questioned about being hit so many times during the game.

“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I was losing ground.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half sacks to top the Texans. His second one came when he nearly sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and chased him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt in the third quarter.

The Bills played for a second straight game absent receiver Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after additionally being delayed for a team session.

No change. We are approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”

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

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

In the end, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever situation and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”