If you notice on most of the huge bombs that Schaub has thrown, it's almost always a play-action pass. Kubiak has been stressing the run first mindset for a few reasons (None of them bad really).
1. Your QB does not have to worry about getting teed off on when passing. Obvious passing downs of course, but most of the time, opposing defenses are thinking we are going to run the ball, because that's what we do first.
2. The play-action becomes a dominant big-play in our playbook. As I said before, if you look at a lot of the long bombs, most of them begin with a play-action that fakes the run. Schaub does a pretty good job of selling the fake, and if a defensive line bites on the play-action that gives Andre Johnson about 4 or 5 extra seconds of time to get wide open (Which he will). It also means Schaub has a lot more extra time to see just who is the best option for 6.
Now a lot of the time, when the Dayne Train is running slowly, teams will not bite on the play-action because they know better. Once that happens, the play-action becomes a disaster with quick D-linemen having an extra second or two to get to the QB, because the QB is going through the motion of faking the run. This is where the play-action will get dangerous, when our running game is obviously off its tracks.
What I want to know is, what happened to the bootlegs, and rollouts we saw in the preseason? Is Schaub just not really mobile enough to pull these plays off?