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Little clicked for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest on Thursday evening against the Houston Texans.

Yet he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a win before an interception in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.

Allen endured consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, resulting in a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to another teammate.

Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth down situation for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off the quarterback's pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.

“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defensive unit saved us a couple of times. We must find a way, and unfortunately we failed.”

Proved difficult for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a career-high on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after accounting for six TDs in a win over the Buccaneers last week.

Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott said. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”

Josh Allen was sluggish to get up after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being contacted so many times during the game.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a couple personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”

Allen lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 sacks to top the Texans. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, 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 consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was tardy to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being delayed for a team session.

No change. We are taking it one day at a time,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that give us the best chance.”

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

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

In the end, we must perform, and we didn’t do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we came up short.”