LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The question for Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman at the team’s midseason press conference would have seemed almost unthinkable a year ago, when the city and the NFL hailed him as an offensive wizard and “quarterback whisperer.”

Would he consider sharing play-calling responsibilities in the second half of the season?

The answer, of course, was no, as Trestman explained that all offensive assistants, including coordinator Aaron Kromer, have input into the game plan.

At 3-5 when much more was expected, everyone at Halas Hall is under scrutiny.

“We weren’t able to get it done the way we wanted to get it done over the first eight weeks of the season,” Trestman said. “There’s no doubt about it.

“There’s no consistency there. There’s moments of very good play, of solid play across the board, and there’s moments of very, very poor play, like we’ve seen over the last couple weeks.”

The Bears’ offseason plan had been to improve the defense from among the league’s worst to at least middle of the pack to complement an explosive offense.

Although the defense has struggled with injuries to Charles Tillman, the first four linebackers, safety Chris Conte and cornerback Kyle Fuller, they’ve improved from 30th to 15th. They’re actually 13th in sacks with 20 despite Jared Allen being limited to 1.5. Even against the run they’ve improved from 32nd to 20th, and even managed to stop their nemesis, the read-option play, against San Francisco and the Jets.

Certainly eight interceptions of quarterback Jay Cutler have hurt, but he hasn’t been the interception machine he has been at times in years past. His 2.7 percent interception rate is his second best as a Bear and best since 2.2 in 2011.

Although the offense hasn’t put up numbers like last year, they’re 14th in the league and are seventh at converting third downs (44 percent).

The solution, Trestman believes, is better “continuity football.” It’s his term for offense setting up the defense, defense setting up the offense and special teams aiding both.

“Every side of the ball has to have a legitimate understanding and a thorough understanding of why this game is tied together in all three phases,” he said.

Part of solving this problem entails better play calling by Trestman. He admits he can help the defense and Cutler simply by calling more runs, especially early in games.

“I do have to do a better job with that and that comes with our first down productivity has to be better,” he said. “We have to get it where it was the year ago where we’re in continuity with the chains and we’re in second-and-manageable situations and so forth.

“We’ve got to do a better job of that because we have an offensive line that can block the run and we’ve got a very good running back. We’ve got to do that.”

Throughout the first half of the season, the Bears had consistently ranked among the worst teams in the league in terms of the ratio of running plays called to minutes spent leading in games. They simply did not commit to the run to any extent.

General manager Phil Emery couldn’t put all the blame for pass-dominated play calling on his head coach.

“When you’re playing Miami and you’re down 14-0 at home, you’re going to have to pass the football,” Emery said. “Some of just doing that is starting the way we started this past week, running the football — we had a couple good plays, we had a good rhythm, we had a holding call.

“That’s where the lack of consistency and working together to get it done in terms of being error-free and continuing to stay on time, so you can build a balance of what you’re doing run-pass.”

Trestman also talked about trying to get his play-makers in better matchup situations like New England did repeatedly Sunday with tight end Rob Gronkowski.

“Finding the right match-ups offensively in terms of getting all of our players the opportunity to get the football in the manner that we would want them to,” Trestman explained. “And on the other side of the ball, making sure we do the same defensively – getting matched up on the right guys and we’re going to spend some time doing that as well.

The rest of it is on the players. Committing silly penalties and committing turnovers at critical times have to stop.

A healthier group should be returning on defense, with linebackers Jonathan Bostic (back) and Lance Briggs (ribs) set to rejoin the starters and nickel unit, and Conte (shoulder) and Fuller (hand, hamstring, hip) benefiting from a week of healing.

Still, they’ve lost defensive end Lamarr Houston to a senseless knee injury on a sack celebration and also have potential offensive line problems with Matt Slauson done for the year with a torn pec.

“This bye week is going to be one of those weeks where guys are going to have to look at themselves and re-commit,” Allen said.

It’s quite possible that at 3-5, a full three games behind Detroit in the NFC North, much more will be required than recommitment.

“The production is 3-5 production right now and that’s not making any of us happy,” Trestman said. “So we’ve got to get this 3-5 production out of our systems this week and move in the right direction.”