Report: Sony Michel's Knee Injury Isn't That Bad

Collective whoosh.

Watching Sony Michel walk off the field yesterday unable to put practically any weight at all on his knee, any hope you had he wouldn’t be done for the year felt like (Gandalf’s words) a fool’s hope. I’ve blown out an ACL and then re-aggravated it two years later and it felt just like he looked leaning on the trainers.

I mean, look at this. It’s not a dirty play by any means. The tackler’s trying to bring him down and it’s the way bodies contort sometimes in that bowl of Mac & Cheese that the line of scrimmage so often is on a running play:

And you felt awful for the kid. He’d missed most of camp and the first game. It took him a week or two to get into the flow of the offense. He’d been getting better each week. Was becoming a real focal point of the offense. Like I wrote in the Knee Jerk Reactions column this morning, Josh McDaniels came out with a new wrinkle for Michel, running him out of single back sets and it was working. By the time he hit the blue sideline M*A*S*H* tent, he was already at 22 yards on just 4 carries and added a 13 yard reception. Losing him for the season then would’ve been a tough break for a guy who was really emerging as a legit factor back. Not to mention hard for an offense that always needs to develop a back who can take the pressure off the passing game in January and February. Plus would put a hell of a strain on an organization that has watched its entire rookie draft class go down like it’s the last half hour of The Departed.

With any more luck, maybe it will turn out that this is how Michel is. Some guys just have the physiology to get pretzeled like that and bounce back from it. I’ll never forget Tedy Bruschi’s knee bent sideways at like a 45 degree angle and it looked for 10 agonizing seconds like his career was over. But got up, jumped up and down three times and never came out of the game. I want to jinx anything, but hopefully Michel has that body type because the way he bent looked nasty.

Speculation about how long he’ll be out is futile and a waste of time. But in the meantime they can go with what they have, re-sign Mike Gillislee or find some other BenJonas Gray-Lewis out there as a stopgap like they’ve always done. Just so long as Michel is back for the playoffs, let’s consider this a giant win. And a huge bullet dodged.