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Two Sharks in the Top 10 of Power Four Linebackers

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Pitt linebacker Rasheem Biles.

It’s important to take Pro Football Focus grades with a grain of salt, but if you watched any Pitt game last season, it’s clear a couple of Sharks were the best players on the field.

Kyle Louis and Rasheem Biles ushered in the new age of Pitt linebackers, bringing The Sharks to the national stage, and with both back next season (along with Braylan Lovelace), the sky is the limit in 2025. But the 2024 season was pretty damn good, too.

Louis earned All-ACC and All-American honors and Biles earned All-ACC honors. According to PFF, the pair were top 10 linebackers at the Power Four level.

Even at eight and 10, Louis and Biles feel too low. But they’re coming back with the goal of being the best linebacking corps in the country in 2025.

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)

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.

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.

Sandy Schall, Coldwell Banker
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