Short Passing Game (Stats included)

So theres been a lot of uproar about our short passing game, or lack there of. And Im frustrated with it as well. Some blame Harris, some blame the play calling, some blame the drops. So I decided to go back and watch all of Harris' passing attempts in the first 7 games (No Bama game) and charted down his attempts to players within 10yards of the line of scrimmage, completions, dropped passes, and missed/inaccurate throws by Harris.

Miss St - 5/7. Both incompletions were throw aways on screen passes due to pressure / not open.
Auburn - 6/7 with 1 missed throw. The miss was questionable. He threw it a bit high and behind Dupre, but still got both hands on it and could have caught it, but would have been a tough catch.
Syracuse - 4/7 with 2 dropped passes. On the other incompletion, Harris was pressured and forced to rollout to the sideline and threw a nice ball, but Dural wasnt able to bring it in while staying in bounds. 2 drops by Diarse.
Eastern Michigan - 1/5 with 2 dropped passes and 2 missed throws. 1 miss was on a screen pass, the other 1 was a comeback / out route to the far sideline. Dural and Dupre each had a drop.
South Carolina - 14/19 with 2 dropped passes and 2 missed throws. 1 miss was a dump off to LF that sailed on Harris. The other was an out route to LF that was a bit behind him, but did get his hands on it. Would have been a tough catch. Dural and Dupre each had a drop.
Florida - 7/8 with 1 dropped pass. Dural had the drop on an easy drag route across the midde.
Western Kentucky - 4/7 with 1 dropped pass and 2 missed throws. Both misses came on out routes where Harris threw it a bit behind the player. 1 went to LF the other went to Jeter. Guice had the drop.
Total: Harris was 41/60 with 7 missed throws on passes to players within 10yards of the line of scrimmage. We also had 8 drops. If the drops were caught, Harris would have been 49/60.

Some people say that the reason we dont run more short routes is because Harris cant do it and doesnt have touch. And thats just not true. Sure, sometimes the ball comes out a little hot. But at this level, if its an accurate pass you are expected to catch the ball. Period. And our WRs are too good to be dropping passes because "the ball is coming too fast". Thats a BS excuse. Do you think WRs told Brett Favre that he was throwing it too hard? Hell no. The ones that couldnt catch it were cut. Its the QBs job to get the ball to the WR and its the WRs job to catch it, regardless how it gets to you. But we have improved on catching the ball as the season progressed, so thats good.

Some of the issues with our short passing game that I noticed while watching the film for this is that even though its a "short pass" yardage wise, they still require our QB to make tough throws and the ball has to travel pretty far. Our WRs are split out extremely wide. Even if we have 2 WRs to one side, the outside WR is almost outside the #s and the inside WR is between the hash marks and #s. If we run a quick slant or a hitch, our WRs are so wide that the QB still has to throw the ball 20yards or so across the field for just a gain of a few yards. And we run a lot of out route to on the wide side of the field. Ball on left hash, WR runs an out route to the right sideline. Thats 1 of the hardest throws to make in football. And again, it requires our QB to throw the ball 25yards for just a few yards gained. Another thing I noticed is that our "short passes" still take a decent bit of time to develop. We like to have twins to the wide side of the field. And like I just said, they are split out extremely wide. The outside WR runs a drag or dig across the middle and the inside WR clears out and goes deep. But it takes a lot of time for the outside WR to get near the middle of the field because they are split out so wide. And that's another thing... We need to work the middle of the field a lot more than we do.

And I get why our offensive philosophy is what it is... Power running with a vertical passing attack. Looking at our personnel, we are built for that. But, when you go up against a team that is built to stop what we like to do with great coaching and you see that it's not working at all, you need to tweak the offense to help our guys out. And not a big tweak either. We don't have to completely change our offensive philosophy and turn into a full on spread team. A simple, easy tweak is all it requires. Putting the WRs closer to the ball and attacking the middle of the field with quick, short passes a bit more would make a big difference. It would help the QB get the ball out faster and he wouldnt have to make all those tough, long throws across the field for short gains.

I do think that we need run more of these shorter pass plays and work the middle of the field when we do it though. In the 7 games I charted, Harris had 128 pass attempts. And only 60 were within 10yards of the LOS. So 53% of our pass plays went beyond 10yards of the LOS. Thats just too much and you cant consistently rely on that. You dont have to go deep all the time. Running short, quick passes can help get an opponent on their heels and sustain drives. Some games, a few more first downs can be a big difference for both sides of the ball. Especially when you are struggling to do anything out there on offense and your D doesnt have depth up front and is gassed out there.