The Top Five Pitt Panthers from the 2024 Season

It’s a new year, and while there won’t be a Pitt football game for months, now is as good a time as any to reflect upon the best players from the 2024 season.

Pitt went 7-6, with six straight losses to end the season, and a loss in six overtimes to Toledo in the GameAbove Sports Bowl sort of blew up on a national level. It was a poor end to what started as the best season in recent program history.

Regardless, there were some very strong performers this season. So, here are the top five players from this season — in order.

Pitt linebacker Kyle Louis conducts the Pitt band following a win against Syracuse.

Kyle Louis

Stats: 101 tackles (45 solo), 16 tackles for loss, seven sacks, four interceptions (one returned for a touchdown), three pass breakups, a forced fumble and a blocked point-after attempt

Accolades: All-American (first- and second-team), All-ACC (first-team)

Kyle Louis was one of my preseason breakout candidates (proud to have selected quite a group of breakout stars, actually). He certainly delivered.

Louis didn’t win the Ed Conway Award for the most improved player of the spring, but with the losses in the linebacking corps and the way people spoke about Louis at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex throughout the offseason, he felt like a safe bet to take the next step. All he did was earn the first first-team All-American honor since Calijah Kancey.

Louis was impactful in just about every single game. Whether it was a key tackle for loss or sack in crunch time (North Carolina) or a defining interception (West Virginia and Syracuse) or even a blocked point-after attempt (Toledo), Louis was there.

It’s hard to overstate just how good he was this season, but maybe it shouldn’t be since there virtually isn’t a player in college football with a stat line like his.

He’s a legitimate star. An All-American who is returning next season.

Desmond Reid

Stats: 184 carries for 966 yards (5.3 yards per carry) and five touchdowns, 52 receptions for 579 yards (11.1 yards per reception) and four touchdowns, 13 punt returns for 122 yards (12.2 yards per return) and a touchdown

Accolades: All-American (second-team), All-ACC (first-team)

This is going to sound like I’m patting myself on the back, and I probably shouldn’t since it was pretty obvious to anyone who was around the program during the offseason, but I picked Desmond Reid as another of my breakout candidates.

I didn’t think he’d be as good as he was though; that’s for sure. There were times this season when Reid was the sole source of production offensively. If Pitt needs a player, either on the ground or in the air, Reid was usually there. He put his body on the line all season.

I don’t know if there was a game he left in which he wasn’t limping. He took a beating from opposing defenses, bounced back up and somehow found his way back onto the field. It was easy to say that Pitt needed to utilize its bigger running backs at times this season, but I’m of the mind that Pitt needed Reid on the field as much as humanly possible.

He’s a shorter guy, but he’s not small. And he proved that size certainly won’t hold him back at this level. I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that he can be even better in Year 2 either.

Pittsburgh Panthers place kicker Ben Sauls (90) December 26, 2024 David Hague/PSN

Ben Sauls

Stats: 21-of-24 field goal attempts (58-yard long) and 44-of-44 point-after attempts

Accolades: All-ACC (third-team)

Ben Sauls, for some reason, didn’t get much national recognition at the end of the season. I have no idea why that is.

Sauls is going to be an NFL kicker, with a strong chance to be drafted, I think, and he showed why every time he stepped onto the field this season. He’s unflappable. There might not be a more confident football player, college or professional, than him.

He hit a 57-yarder in the first half against Toledo, which would’ve likely been good from 62 or 63 yards. He hit three kicks of at least 57 yards this season, including a 58-yarder against Cal that tied the record for longest field goal in program history.

He averaged 44 yards on his makes and 50 yards on his misses, which includes a blocked 45-yarder. If Pitt needed three points, Sauls was there. And he was automatic with his point-after attempts.

Rasheem Biles

Stats: 82 tackles (46 solo), 15 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, one interception returned for a touchdown, nine pass breakups, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery

Accolades: All-ACC (second-team)

Was Rasheem Biles overshadowed a bit by Louis? Sure. Was it a successful season? Oh, yeah. Biles took perhaps the biggest leap of all, jumping from eight defensive snaps to 534.

He was the least heralded of the linebackers in the class of 2023, alongside Braylan Lovelace and Jordan Bass, but he’s emerged as the most impactful. He’s a prototypical outside linebacker at Pitt, flying to the football.

The sky is the limit for Biles as he enters his third season with the program. But he was damn good as a sophomore. If it wasn’t Louis making a play, it was Biles. And it was often together.

Biles was excellent in 2024 and should be even better in 2025. He’s an impressive athlete, one of the best on the team, and that was pretty apparent every time he stepped onto the field.

Biles isn’t just a sidekick either; he’s a full-blown star in his own right.

Pittsburgh Panthers quarterback Eli Holstein (10) October 24, 2024 Photo by David Hague/PSN

Eli Holstein 

Stats: 180-of-291 pass attempts (61.9%) for 2,228 yards with 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions, 81 carries for 328 yards (4.0 yards per carry) and three touchdowns

It was kind of hard to nail down a fifth-best Pitt player this season, and there are a few options (Donovan McMillon, Konata Mumpfield, Sean FitzSimmons), but it’s impossible to leave out Eli Holstein — no matter how disjointed the second half of the season went.

Holstein stepped in as a second-year freshman, just a few months after transferring in from Alabama, and had one of the best starts in program history. The Heisman Trophy talk may have been premature, but Holstein was legitimately one of the best quarterbacks in college football through the first half of the season.

He led double-digit fourth quarter comebacks against Cincinnati and West Virginia (his first taste of the Backyard Brawl) and he marched into Chapel Hill, N.C. and picked up a win for the first time in program history — 450 yards of offense and four touchdowns in the process.

Holstein has the tools. He’s a big, strong quarterback, who just turned 20, with enough mobility to take off against any defense.

It can be easy to forget that Holstein is coming off his first, incomplete season as a starting quarterback. He suffered through injuries and somewhat of a freshman wall in the second half of the season, but that doesn’t diminish his impact in the first half of the season.