If I'm throwing short, obviously my distribution on short throws affects the play. Does my vs or m distribution also impact the play in any way?

I don't know for sure but I think your distribution settings for other depths could possibly have an impact by removing a receiver from your intended depth.

For example, say you have your WR1 set to get 60% of the passes at Medium and also 100% of the passes at Long. That *might* result in WR1 being at Long and then if your QB makes another progression read, and decides to throw it to the Medium depth, then WR1 *might* be out of the equation.

I don't know if this happens. I think it could be happening sometimes, because it sometimes seems to be the only explanation for some of PbP details that I have seen on some of my pass plays . . . But I cannot say for sure.

I have had situations where my WR1 was supposed to get 99% of the pass targets at a particular depth, but then in the actual game results, my WR2 ended up getting 90% of the targets at that depth even though he was only supposed to get 1%. I have had this happen many times.

This is a great question and there might not be a definite answer. I've messed around with different settings on certain playbooks and yardage with mixed results. The only logic I can come up with is that the opposing defense CB locked down my #1 target or WR1 and my QB had to do an additional read/check down. Then again Defensive pressure not giving your QB enough time to make the read or pass to WR1 and has to dump it off or tack the sack/incompletion.