It's been a month whilst he's been playing on it. A Running Back would have had to sit out a full month...one game's rest is not going to heal him up...in fact I'm willing to bet it doubles his full recovery time. He isn't the same now and he won't be for at least a couple more weeks.
I think the "truth" (with drama queen Roethlisberger, that's hard to determine) probably lies somewhere in the middle, UK.
I don't think anyone is more right than wrong on this subject, but living here in Pittsburgh allows me to follow the situation pretty carefully.
In the beginning (from the Dec.8 CLE game to the Dec.19 SF game) the local media was really playing a lot into it, and talking night and day about it. As of the past couple weeks, the attention is really dying down, and he himself is even actually stating that he's feeling a lot better. (which is quite a stretch for Roethlisberger, as he tends to play every injury up to the fullest)
I'm sure there's some truth to what you're saying to, but taking into account the fact that he didn't :
1. Even have to miss the rest of the inital game on Dec.8th
2. Didn't even need a painkilling injection for the MNF game vs San Francisco on Dec.19th
3. Even have to miss last week's pretty-much meaningless game vs CLE (yes, they 'could have' moved up in seeding, but if he were that banged up he would've been forced to rest vs. CLE in the last game)
I would say that by the time we'd play him on Jan.14th or the weekend of Jan.21/22, that 5-6 full weeks of recovery should lessen his injury significantly.
You are correct in stating that he "had to continue playing on it," but if you've noticed, he really hasn't been running around too much and putting much stress on it. I don't believe that it has been getting worse. Brady had an
outright fracture from the beginning of November thru the middle of January last year, and was able to lead them just fine.
If he were to somehow re-injure it next weekend in Denver, or if it had just happened recently, I would feel a lot better, but I do not believe personally, that Roethlisberger's injury should limit their offense too much. More importantly, it's their defense which has really been playing lights out anyway. Even though their offense hasn't been scoring much at all, they've continued to win every game but the SF one, down the stretch.