if he has no pain, then the issue is being stiff and/or getting back into shape. I doubt he's been running on a treadmill for the past few weeks, but conceivably could have been doing work in the pool to maintain muscle strength.
As was said, Ben at 50% is better than Vick at 100% in this offense. Haley CAN alter the play calling to get the ball out of Ben's hands quicker, as we did that a year or two ago with quite some efficiency. I know he went a stretch of games where he wasn't sacked a lot (for him).
Someone said that the issue with the bone bruise was it could increase the chance of the bone breaking. I've not seen anything about that on any of the medical sites I've browsed looking for this.
Hey Supe, I was worried, when I saw the injury, that it was a an impaction bone bruise or kissing contusion, since the preliminary reports were all showing concern of the severity of the bone bruise. A repeat blow in the same way to that joint, before being completely healed, can cause a severe injury to the joint. If it's external, bone fragmentation may occur. These injuries can take over a year to completely heal, so that would be a ton of concern with that.
After doing a bunch of research on the severity, range of motion, and type of bone bruise associated with Ben's range of motion during his injury, it appears that his bone bruise should be less severe (as his leg was not planted at the time of impact). His bones hitting each other is what saved his ACL, as it took the impact of the joint, and that is the best case scenario of that injury. Not being planted also helped to deflect the impact along his entire leg, and not place all of the impact on the joint (as is what happens when the foot is planted in the turf.
Moving forward, if Ben isn't feeling pain in the joint, that's a great sign that the bone bruise is much less severe than the team was anticipating. I haven't seen the MRIs so it's impossible to discuss severity without them. Ben can still play football before the bone bruise is fully healed, and one big thing that would help him during contact, is to wear a knee brace. This would be more to protect the bone bruise, then to protect the MCL, which should be fully healed when he steps back on the field for a game.
He's the franchise, and there's no way the team doctors or FO would allow Ben to play without the MCL fully repaired. From watching the injury, I still have firmly set my time table for his return at 6 weeks. If he comes back before then, I'm ecstatic, but I will be concerned that he isn't fully healed. Ben has shown in the past that he is a fast healer, and he has all the best medical treatment he can receive, including the best athletic injury hospital in the nation (UPMC). If they have treatments that can reduce his healing time (micro-current, plasma therapy, heat treatments, ultrasound), I'm sure Ben and the team will exhaust each and every resource to make his knee as strong as possible, before he returns to a game.