One of the great things about college football is having friends who also follow it and then debating with them the different points of view about our favorite football program. We do that like crazy here on the Blather so as a switch from all the negative things we fans have been dealing with when it comes to the program lately let’s sit back and take a look at some past and present team and player comparisons.
A bright spot of the 2014 season is the production of some of our underclass starters on offense. Boyd is replicating his great ’13 season, Conner has blown up after a pretty darn good true FR year and it looks like Voytik has settled in a bit and could be more productive in 2015. Next season we should see even more increase in the offense play of these three as a whole.
The thing that jumps out to me first and foremost is how exceedingly productive James Conner has been at Defensive End Running Back. PITT has a great history of running backs especially going back to the 1970’s with Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett. For timely comparison sake let’s go back 10 years and look at the best rushing yardage years of five of PITT’s most productive RBs of that decade with the best production in red.
| RB | GP | Carries | Yards | YPC | CPG | YPG | TDs |
| Dorsett | 11 | 370 | 2150 | 5.8 | 33.6 | 195.5 | 22 |
| Lewis | 13 | 325 | 1799 | 5.5 | 25.0 | 138.4 | 17 |
| Conner* | 10/12 | 250/300 | 1562/1874 | 6.2 | 25.0 | 156.2 | 21/25 |
| McCoy | 13 | 308 | 1488 | 4.8 | 23.7 | 114.5 | 21 |
| Graham | 12 | 222 | 1042 | 4.7 | 18.5 | 86.8 | 11 |
* – Conner’s projection for the whole 2014 season is in bold italics, assuming no bowl game 🙁
