LAKE FOREST, Ill. — It’s going to take more than coaches’ impassioned halftime pleas or 15-yard touchdown drives for the Chicago Bears to do on Thanksgiving what they failed to do last season — beat the Detroit Lions.

Essentially, the Bears have chosen one really strange place — Detroit’s Ford Field — to try to find consistency on offense and defense as they battle injuries, crowd noise and themselves.

“We’ve got to be able to take care of ourselves first,” coach Marc Trestman said in analyzing the team’s problems.

Detroit is coming off two straight losses, and the Bears saw how New England beat Detroit All-Pro tackle Ndamukong Suh and the third-ranked defense last week very convincingly. But that required precision and there has been little of that in Chicago’s offense this year.

“Against a team like this, you’ve got to get the ball out, you’ve got to get some catch-and-runs,” quarterback Jay Cutler said. “You’ve got to break some tackles because you’re not going to be able to consistently push it down 15-20 yards.

“A lot of things are going to be under 12 yards, under 5 yards, so you’ve got to get some catch-and-runs. That’s where you’re going to get your pushes down the field.”

The Bears have been able to achieve this to some extent on offense when they haven’t been busy making silly mistakes. Running back Matt Forte leads the NFL with 615 yards after the catch, and wide receiver Alshon Jeffery (15th) and tight end Martellus Bennett (20th) are both in the top 20.

Cutler wants to see the pocket moving so Suh and the Lions’ defensive front can’t focus on him. Two weeks ago, the Bears did this well in a win over Minnesota. They accomplished it only a handful of times against Tampa Bay.

“You’ve got to move the pocket,” Cutler said. “If you’re throwing the ball 40-50 times from 6-7 yards deep, they’re going to get home eventually.

“So we’ve got to run the ball, we’ve got to kick it out, we’ve got to move the pocket, we’ve got to play-action them, we’ve got to find ways to keep them off balance.”

The only way to achieve all of this for the Chicago offense is to keep the chains moving forward instead of moving back because of penalties.

The Bears have 18 false-start penalties, nine more than all of last season — and they still have five games left to pad the total. It hasn’t been any single individual. Tackle Jermon Bushrod and guard Kyle Long have three each and tackle Jordan Mills four, but 10 different players have had the 18 penalties.

Reversing this trend while trying to use a silent count at Ford Field looks difficult if not impossible.

“We have to lock into the snap count and use our silent count and our alternative cadence systems to be able to get it done in the noise anyway,” Trestman said. “We gotta be locked in. It will be critically important. We gotta stay in sequence and not get behind the chains.”

The threat of a long play can loosen up Detroit’s defense, but the Bears have moved incrementally all year rather than in big chunks.

“We’ve gone round and round on that — we just haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities — whether they’ve been given to us or not,” Trestman said. “We’re going to continue to try and exploit them when we can.

“Teams are playing deep (zone) and we’ve got to find ways to get there and get home with those plays like we did a couple of weeks ago. We were able to do that. We weren’t able to do that last week, obviously, but we’ll continue to try to attack teams and try to give our guys opportunities off the edge and try to be able to make something happen.”

Under normal circumstances, the Bears’ offense could expect help from their own defense. The Lions have inexplicably struggled on offense despite all their weapons, much like the Bears.

However, the Bears will be trying to contain Detroit with several young players in key roles because of injuries, most notably to linebacker Lance Briggs and cornerback Kyle Fuller.

Cornerbacks Demontre Hurst and Al Louis-Jean, linebackers Christian Young and Jonathan Bostic and defensive linemen Stephen Paea, Cornelius Washington and David Bass all have stepped up the past two weeks against lesser competition as the Bears held consecutive opponents to matching season-low point totals.

“You see a number of young guys stepping up and improving,” defensive coordinator Mel Tucker said. “That’s a good sign for us. With the young guys, they have to play well now when they get the opportunity. They need to go in and produce because the league doesn’t care how much experience you have or don’t have.

“It’s really a production-based deal.”

Production hasn’t been a word often associated with many Bears this season beyond Forte, who has been the epitome of consistency.

They’ll need to correct this Thursday or find themselves on the brink of elimination from the wild-card chase.