What Miami’s Jacory Harris Needs To Fix For The Hurricanes To Return to Championship Form

Posted by By Sports Session at 8 July, at 06 : 57 AM Print

What Miami’s Jacory Harris Needs To Fix For The Hurricanes To Return to Championship Form

Miami quarterback Jacory Harris has brought a winning mentality from his High School program, and you can start to see his influence positively affecting the team. There is still a lot of work to do, and Harris needs to solidly make this “his” team next season at all costs.  Harris is now fully recovered from a thumb injury that plagued him all season last year, the problem was fixed with off season surgery.  Harris is now ready to participate in all practice drills in preparation for the 2010 season.

Miami made strides last year, but still under performed based on their schedule. Jacory Harris is one of the key parts of this team, and will have to perform if the team is to be successful next season. The Hurricanes have lofty goals, ACC championship, and an outside hope at playing for a National Championship. With Harris on many preseason Heisman watch lists, expectations could not be higher.

  1. Limit the Number of Interceptions – Jacory Harris had a great season throwing the football, but there was one big negative. He led the nation in throwing balls to the opposing team, and several of them at key times during games. In order for the Hurricanes to accomplish their goals (winning the ACC for example), Harris will have to take care of the football. We know this is partially due to the offensive line play, the quarterback has to adjust, as I am sure the offensive coordinator has prepared for pressure in most cases. Harris at one point said he trusted his offensive line last year, which is a great thing to say for team unity.  Harris has to avoid trusting the offensive line too much and pay attention to the game situations more, there were times where the defense conceded the short pass. Instead, Harris scrambled to buy more time and was either sacked or hurled a pass down field into a host of defenders. Those are the plays he needs to avoid.
  2. Get In The Weight Room – Harris is a slim 6’4” which is good height for a quarterback, but he is a relative lightweight.  He needs to spend some time putting a little bit of weight on that frame. The primary reason for this is to improve his durability throughout the entire season. I am sure all Hurricanes fans held their breath when he was briefly knocked out of the game against Florida State.  Of course, Harris does not want to tinker too much with anything that will mess up his mechanics or throwing motion. If you look at what happened to Colt McCoy in the National Title game (although the injury had nothing to do with McCoy’s size), the importance of having a healthy signal caller was apparent.  Imagine if the Hurricanes were in that game last year and the same thing happened, we would have been treated to A.J. Highsmith versus the Alabama defense.
  3. Become More Aware In The Pocket – Harris is relatively good at moving around in the pocket and making plays, but there are times where he does not seem to feel defenders bearing down on him. This contributed to the 34 times he was sacked last season; being sacked that many times will not bode well for the Hurricanes conference title aspirations.  Those sacks can lead to an injury for Harris, and turnovers—which plagued this team last year. There were several occasions where Harris was blind-sided and did not feel the defender coming. Eventually quarterbacks develop a clock in their head that tells them when to get rid of the ball, let’s hope Harris improves in this area next season.
  4. Stop Waiting For The Deep Pass – Harris has shown the ability to throw a fantastic deep ball. With the receiving corps he has at his disposal the Hurricanes offense can score on almost any down. That does not mean he needs to look for the big play on every single down. Harris has a tendency to hold on to the ball to try and get it deep on a consistent basis. This probably accounts for the high number of sacks, and the high number of interceptions he had last season.  Games like Virginia Tech and North Carolina are reminders that patience valuable. The conditions were horrible against Virginia Tech, and the Hurricanes offensive line could not block them. Holding on to the ball trying to get all the points back on one play was not a good idea.  If this flaw is corrected, and Harris picks and chooses his spots to go deep then the sky is the limit for this offense.
  5. Crush Subpar Competition Early In the Game - You can argue that this Miami Hurricanes football team is just as talented as any team in the country. You can easily make the case that they should be able beat most of the teams on their schedule if you are comparing talent man for man. But too often against the Dukes, South Florida’s, and Wake Forests of the college football world they make these games harder than they should be.  In several cases it led to a loss when the Hurricanes late game heroics failed to bail them out (North Carolina, Clemson). Against these teams Harris needs to keep the offense moving and pressuring the opposing team. All too often the offense goes into hibernation for two quarters of the game, and then wakes up in the fourth quarter. If they want to win the ACC, and even compete for a National title they need to correct this flaw.
  6. Be A More Vocal Leader – Jacory Harris is one of the most calm, poised, and under control players when the pressure is on. It is this composure that allowed the Hurricanes to mount several late game comebacks last season. The team found itself in several tight games almost every week, and more times that not Harris rose to the occasion to lead the team to victory. The flip side of this are games like North Carolina and Wisconsin. Some can argue that Harris was the primary reason for the loss to North Carolina with all the interceptions he threw, but even with that the defense failed to pick him up and stop the Tar Heels. It was even worse against the Wisconsin Badgers, Harris left it on the field taking a pummeling from the Badgers defense all night. Most of the other players on the team seemed like they were not that interested after the Badgers hit them in the mouth. Harris needs to challenge his teammates when their minds seem elsewhere, he does not need to go yelling and starting fights of course.  Harris needs to create an environment where players do not want to let him down, they see he is leaving it on the field and they need to do the same.

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3 Comments

  1. Dave, 1 year ago Reply

    Is it fair to put everything on Jacory? I think he needs to do a lot, but it is a team sport. The best QB in the world is screwed if the o-line sucks.

    • Sports Session, 1 year ago

      I will say Manning & Brady give them a crap offensive line and you still get 3000 yards passing. Play calling and scheme can account for a crappy offensive line, and when that doesn’t work the quarterback needs to step up and stop taking the beating then blaming it all on the O-line.

  2. What Miami's Jacory Harris Needs To Fix For The Hurricanes To … | Hurricanes 411, 1 year ago Reply

    [...] What Miami’s Jacory Harris Needs To Fix For The Hurricanes To Return to Championship Form [...]


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