At least three runs would have exhausted all of Houston’s timeouts, making Stroud’s 5-yard pass to get Fairbairn a little closer.

McDermott was asked if he agreed with offensive coordinator Joe Brady throwing three passes.

“I’m not going to go into that. I don’t think it’s relevant right now,” the coach said. “Overall, it’s back to me. We just have to do better. I have to do better in this situation.”

Maybe even a designed Allen run or giving the QB the option to run would have played better than three passes of 15+ air yards.

“I like Josh with the ball in his hands,” McDermott said. “That’s what I do. An efficient attack was the right approach there, and I didn’t let us do that. So again, we learn from that. Tough situation, like I said. They have three timeouts. They have a good field goal kicker, and you go back and forth. I probably should have run it on the first play and said, ‘Hey, where are we now?’ Either way, we’ll have to move the chains at some point to not give them a chance. Again, those are situations, and that’s up to me.”

Honestly, with the way the offense played, the Bills probably shouldn’t have even been late in the game. Houston beat Buffalo 425 yards to 276 yards. If two Stroud turnovers aren’t forced by Buffalo in the fourth quarter, it’s probably a 10-point loss. But it hurts that better game management later could have at least given McDermott’s side a chance to steal a road victory in overtime.

“To fight back after falling like we did. We have a lot of young guys, especially on the defensive side, competing and giving us big efforts in all three phases,” McDermott said. “Margins are small in the NFL and we have to keep working to improve and get some guys healthy at some point. I think that would help, but that’s no excuse. We have to find ways to get these out. “