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Little clicked for Josh Allen in a frustrating contest Thursday night versus the Houston Texans.

And still he came close to willing the Bills to a win before an late pick in the last moments sealed their fate in a close loss.

The quarterback endured consecutive tackles for loss on the team's last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but the Bills (7-4) gained 44 yards on a quick throw from Josh Allen to Josh Palmer, who flipped a backward pass to another teammate.

After a pre-snap infraction created a fourth down situation for the Bills, Calen Bullock picked off Allen’s pass at the Houston 9 with 24 seconds remaining.

“We had a chance to win it there at the conclusion,” Josh Allen stated. “Our team performed a solid job of hanging tough and our defensive unit bailed us out a couple of times. We must find a way, and we didn’t.”

It was tough for Allen to get anything going on a evening he was brought down a personal-worst eight times and hit four additional instances. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and no touchdowns after producing six touchdowns in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.

Whenever they hit our quarterback a dozen times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that stat at all. It’s just not a healthy way to play and it’s not a smart way to keep our quarterback in good shape for the remaining games. We’ve got to play better.”

Josh Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the first half. He said he was fine and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he landed on it in an awkward manner. He was asked about being hit so frequently on Thursday.

“It’s not fun,” he said. “I encountered a couple myself. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”

Allen surrendered 70 total yards on the eight quarterback takedowns. Anderson had two and a half tackles for loss to lead the Texans. Another sack occurred when he almost took Allen down near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and pursued him across the field to drop him for an 18-yard loss to force a punt in the third quarter.

Buffalo played for a second consecutive matchup without receiver Keon Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously held out for the first series of a loss to New England in the fifth week after also being late for a meeting.

No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach said. “I felt he had a improved week, but we are handling it step by step. It wasn’t that it wasn’t thought about, but we opted for the guys that provide the optimal opportunity.”

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

The quarterback was disappointed that the team couldn’t make plays down the stretch.

In the end, we must execute, and we failed to do a good job of that this evening,” he concluded. “Whatever scenario and whatever circumstance, we need to discover a solution, and we came up short.”