Bulls, Bears & Panthers: Analyzing Week 5

Bulls, Bears & Panthers is a weekly column that brings the buzz of Wall Street to Forbes and Fifth. Well…minus the suspenders. In all seriousness, this is our weekly analysis of Pitt football’s stock.

Each week during the season, I take a look back at the Panthers’ most recent game and select a Bull (a player, coach etc. which is upward trending) and a Bear (a player, coach etc. which is downward trending). Believe me, this is always lots of fun because just like in the stock market, in college football, you never quite know what a new day will bring. While Saturday's slog with Virginia wasn't the most exciting win, Pitt came out on top to improve to 3-1 on the year. Not a bad outcome for the homecoming crowd. I'm traveling on business this week, so this will be brief, but the Bull and Bear for the Panthers after week 5 are as follows:

Bull (upward trending): Tyler Boyd The freshman receiver had another tremendous game with seven catches for 111 yards, giving Boyd his third straight 100-yard receiving game. Thus far for the season, Boyd leads the ACC in all-purpose yards and ranks sixth nationally with an average of 175.2 per game. Even better, the college football world is beginning to take notice of his talent. This past week Pitt announced that Boyd has been added to the Biletnikoff Award candidate list which really speaks to the incredible season he’s had to date. Boyd’s stock has been racing up all year and it continues to soar.

Bear (downward trending): The offensive line Tom Savage and James Conner both had lackluster numbers this week which can mean one of two things. Either both just had a bad game or the offensive line didn’t quite do its job. I was actually unable to watch the game, but I’m guessing it was more the latter. Savage posted a -57 yards of rushing from all the sacks and pressure he took while Conner put up a measly 1.8 yards per carry. Overall the line has been decent this year - especially considering it includes three first-time starters – and they’ll absolutely have some off games during the season. This happened to be one of them so their stock drops heading into the off weekend.

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