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Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating game on Thursday evening versus the Texans.

And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a 23-19 defeat.

The quarterback endured consecutive tackles for loss on the Bills’ final possession, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) picked up 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who flipped a lateral to Khalil Shakir.

Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off Allen’s pass at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.

“We had a opportunity to come out on top there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a few instances. We must figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

It was difficult for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a personal-worst on eight occasions and pressured four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with two interceptions and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.

“When they hit our QB 12 times, I don’t like that,” Buffalo's head coach McDermott commented. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a safe way to play and it’s not a smart way to preserve our field general healthy for the rest of the season. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was slow to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He indicated he was OK 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 myself. I’ve got to be more effective at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself losing ground.”

Allen lost 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had 2.5 sacks to lead the Houston defense. His second one occurred when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.

The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their last game. He was earlier benched for the opening drive of a loss to New England in Week 5 after additionally being late for a meeting.

“Nothing new. We are approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we’re taking it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the players that give us the optimal opportunity.”

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

The quarterback was disappointed that the Bills couldn’t execute down the stretch.

“Ultimately, we’ve got execute, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we need to find a way, and we didn’t.”