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Very little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Texans.

Yet he nearly managed to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an interception in the last moments sealed their fate in a close defeat.

The quarterback took consecutive sacks on the team's final possession, leading to a fourth-and-27, but Buffalo (with seven wins) picked up significant yardage on a short pass from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to Khalil Shakir.

After a pre-snap infraction led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, a Texans defender picked off the quarterback's throw at the 9-yard line with 24 seconds remaining.

We possessed a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen said. “We did a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and we didn’t.”

It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times and hit four additional instances. Allen passed for 253 yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over the Buccaneers last week.

“When they pressure our QB a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that statistic at all. It is not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to preserve our field general in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was slow to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his left shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being hit so many times on Thursday.

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

Allen surrendered 70 yards on the eight sacks. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Houston defense. His second one came when he nearly took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he wriggled away and the defender got up and pursued him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt early in the third.

The Bills played for a second straight game absent wideout Coleman after he was again a healthy scratch after he was late to a team meeting before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being delayed for a meeting.

No change. We’re just taking it day by day,” McDermott 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 provide the optimal opportunity.”

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

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

“Ultimately, we must perform, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he said. “No matter the situation and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”