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Very little went well for the Bills' quarterback in a tough contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.

And still he nearly managed to willing the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments ended their hopes in a 23-19 defeat.

The quarterback took consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

Following a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.

We possessed a chance to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of staying in it and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got find a way, and we didn’t.”

Proved tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six touchdowns in a win over Tampa Bay the previous week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback 12 times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to play and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy 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 “went a little numb” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so frequently on Thursday.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I ran into a few personally. I’ve got to be better at throwing the ball away. Too many times, I found myself losing ground.”

The Bills' QB lost 70 total yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he almost took Allen down near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and the defender rose and pursued him downfield to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to result in a punt in the third quarter.

Buffalo played for a second straight game absent wideout Keon Coleman after he was again a non-participant after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was previously held out for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after also being late for a meeting.

“Nothing new. We’re just taking it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking 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 topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.

Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t execute down the stretch.

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