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Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night against the Houston Texans.

And still he came close to driving the Buffalo Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute ended their hopes in a close loss.

Allen took back-to-back sacks on the team's last drive, resulting in a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained significant yardage on a quick throw from Allen to Josh Palmer, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.

Following a false-start penalty led to a fourth-and-6 for Buffalo, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds left.

We possessed a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a good job of hanging tough and our defense saved us a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”

Proved tough for the signal-caller to get anything going on a night he was brought down a career-high eight times 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 victory over the Buccaneers the previous week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, I don’t like that,” Bills coach McDermott said. “I disapprove of that stat at all. It is not a safe way to compete and it isn't a smart way to preserve our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”

Allen was sluggish to rise after a sack in the first half. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it awkwardly. He was asked about being hit so many times during the game.

“It’s not fun,” he remarked. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be better at disposing of the football. On multiple occasions, I found myself going backwards.”

The Bills' QB surrendered 70 yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Will Anderson Jr. had 2.5 tackles for loss to top the Texans. Another sack occurred when he nearly sacked the QB near the line of scrimmage, but he wriggled away and Anderson got up and chased him across the field to tackle him for an 18-yard deficit to force a punt early in the third.

The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Keon Coleman after he was once more a healthy scratch after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was earlier benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after also being late for a team session.

“Nothing new. We’re just approaching it one day at a time,” McDermott noted. “I felt he had a better week, but we’re handling it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the best chance.”

Khalil Shakir topped the Bills with eight catches for 110 receiving yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.

Allen was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.

“Ultimately, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the scenario and whatever condition, we’ve got to discover a solution, and we didn’t.”