HOUSTON – Josh Allen’s carcass was laid out again, face down on the field, same as last Sunday, crushed with a body shot while trying to resurrect the Buffalo Bills’ flaccid offense.
Allen’s throwing shoulder and then the right side of his Buffalo Bills helmet bounced off the ground. His facemask dug into the synthetic grass, making the rubber pellets fly as his body slid onward, forehead-first. On his stomach, Allen slowly kicked his feet up and down in pain, while his offensive lineman beckoned the medical staff to help.
Allen eventually returned, but the symbolism was unmistakable in a 23-20 loss to the Houston Texans in NRG Stadium.
The Bills’ offense is in peril. Don’t be fooled by the close result. They did muster an opportunity to win, rallying from a 17-point, third-quarter deficit to tie the game with 3:18 to play, but the Bills’ first-half offense was atrocious again. As was the case in last week’s stanky loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Allen struggled to connect with his wideouts, tried to put on his superhero cape and got slobberknocked.
Allen needed more help from his offensive line, from his receivers and from Joe Brady, the offensive coordinator who exposed Allen to a vicious hit on a gadget play in Baltimore. Allen also failed to help himself on several plays in the past couple games.
At his postgame news conference, Allen was ragged. Blood from near his right knee soaked through his white leggings. He said he rolled his ankle on the aforementioned calamity, a desperate scramble and throw to prevent defensive tackle Mario Edwards from recording a third-down sack. While in the blue medical tent, the NFL’s concussion spotter ordered an evaluation on Allen.
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Despite all that, Allen stood at the lectern and advised us to remain calm.
“It starts with making better decisions on my part,” Allen said. “I didn’t complete the ball at a high rate tonight, put the ball in harm’s way, especially early in that first half. But I trust our guys.
“I know you guys are going to be wild this week, but I love my guys, and we’re going to keep working. This isn’t a defining moment in our season. There’s a chance to learn and grow from this, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
I asked Allen why us reporters shouldn’t “be wild” about how the Bills have performed two weeks in a row.
“Let’s not base all this off of one game,” Allen replied. “I think our guys have been doing a great job early on in the season, finding ways to get open. Joe has been calling it well. Ultimately, it comes down to me, executing at a high level. I just didn’t do that enough tonight.”
But he can’t keep living like this, and Buffalo won’t be able to win many games with its passing offense in such wimpy disarray.
Allen completed nine of his 30 attempts, the lowest number of completions on at least that many attempts in the NFL since 1992.
Typical of Allen’s accountability, he took all the blame he could. The coaching staff deserves its share. Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud, who had star receiver Nico Collins for less than one quarter, tried his darnedest to give away the game in the fourth quarter with a red-zone interception, a lost fumble deep in Buffalo territory and a weird intentional grounding that turned a field-goal attempt into a punt.
Even so, the Bills couldn’t get the game into overtime. They had the ball on their own 3-yard line with 32 seconds left, but the Texans had all three timeouts. Brady called three straight pass plays. Allen, ragdolled into the medical tent just a few minutes earlier, went deep on all of them, failing to complete any. The Texans took over on the Bills’ 46-yard line and ran a quick pass play for 5 yards. Ka’imi Fairbairn kicked a 59-yard field goal as time expired.
“Being aggressive,” Allen said. “Coach is going to trust us to go out there and do that. Obviously, we’d love to convert there, and hindsight is 20/20, but … Yeah.”
Bills coach Sean McDermott at first declined to second-guess the sequence, but then conceded he would have preferred to run on first down and then reassess down, distance and time. Nevertheless, the Bills required a first down to end regulation time with the ball.
Bills coach Sean McDermott (Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)
Allen never has lost three games in a row as a starter, but he hasn’t had such an ineffective collection of receivers like this since his rookie season. Next up are the New York Jets at the Meadowlands on “Monday Night Football.” The Jets look like a club in turmoil, but their defense is among the NFL’s stingiest.
Allen completed only four of his 18 attempts to Bills wideouts. Against the Ravens, he completed 10 of 18, although Khalil Shakir caught four of his five targets before leaving with a right ankle injury. Shakir’s absence was significant Sunday. McDermott admitted he expected more from the others.
“I would have hoped for more, honestly,” McDermott said. “I’m sure those guys feel the same way.”
We won’t know what those guys think for a few days because the only targeted Bills wideout at his locker stall after the game was rookie Keon Coleman, who turned a fourth-and-5 stop route into a 49-yard touchdown to make the score 20-17 with 4:20 left in the third quarter. Tight end Dalton Kincaid exited the locker room as reporters were permitted entry.
A week after the Bills surrendered a one-play touchdown drive in the first quarter, they repeated the feat. Ravens running back Derrick Henry recorded the longest gain against a McDermott defense, busting an 87-yard touchdown run on their first snap.
The Texans depantsed them through the air with 1:34 left in the first quarter. Collins flew past cornerback Rasul Douglas and safety Cole Bishop, and snagged Stroud’s spiral in stride for a 67-yard TD, tying the ninth-longest play allowed in the McDermott era, a stretch of 130 games, including playoffs. Collins injured his hamstring on the play and didn’t return.
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By halftime, Mack Hollins was the lone Bills’ receiver with any catches, and he’s the target Allen has struggled with most of all the past two games. Last Sunday in Baltimore, Hollins caught one of his six targets for 5 yards. They failed to connect on their first two tries in Houston, too, including a possible touchdown in the first quarter. Hollins made an inside-out move that stumbled rookie safety Calen Bullock and left the right sideline wide open, but Allen’s throw went to Hollins’ outside shoulder and fell incomplete 43 yards downfield at Houston’s 16-yard line.
Allen misfired on another potential touchdown right before halftime, this time a flat underthrow that failed to reach Kincaid 32 yards downfield at Houston’s 40-yard line with a lot of vacant land ahead. Instead, linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair is the one who got his hands on it. One play later, Al-Shaair dropped another interception. Allen threw right to him on a third-down scramble.
“We were off slightly tonight,” Allen said. “That’s something I’ve got to clean up. I’m proud of how we responded in the second half. We got on our horses and gave ourselves a chance to win the football game.”
Despite being down 20-3 in the third quarter, Buffalo re-established the run well enough to score a couple touchdowns. Brady went with heavy packages, inserting Alec Anderson as an extra lineman, and called mid-zone runs that found traction against Houston’s nickel defense. James Cook finished with 20 carries for 82 yards and a touchdown and added two catches for 17 yards.
“It’s hard right now to take any sort of … I don’t know what the right word would be because it’s just a crappy feeling,” said left guard David Edwards, “the way you lose that game, the opportunities you had to win it. There’s a lot of positives I think we can draw on, but ultimately the job is to win the game, and we didn’t do that.”
A week ago, Allen lay prostrate on the M&T Stadium turf in a game that featured misfires galore and dropped interceptions.
Then it happened all over again. Over the two games since “everybody eats” was lauded as an organizational ethos, Allen is 25 of 59 for 311 yards and one touchdown while rushing nine times for 75 yards.
Fortunately for Buffalo, the rest of the AFC East has looked pretty pathetic lately. But if the offense doesn’t rebound, the Bills will be the ones face down in the divisional ditch.
(Top photo: Leslie Plaza Johnson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
