LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Turnovers have put the Chicago Bears into a dire position in the NFC North, two games behind Detroit and Green Bay.

Playing the New England Patriots in a road game this week is not exactly an ideal situation for a team with a quarterback prone to turnovers, like Jay Cutler has been.

Cutler’s penchant for turnovers long has been his downfall, and in a season when the Bears thought he would get past this because he had finally be in the same offense for successive years, the problems remain.

It’s threatening to turn the Bears’ entire season sour.

“I’ve just got to lead this group and try to find a way to make sure we play clean football for four quarters,” Cutler said.

Only four teams have taken the ball away more times than the Bears have, yet they have squandered their defense’s takeaways by giving it away 13 times.

In each of their four losses, they lost the turnover battle, and usually it’s Cutler giving it away.

“We’ve got to protect the ball, we’ve got to convert on third down, we’ve got to get a rhythm going,” Cutler said.

Eight Bears turnovers occurred at home, but playing in New England is unlikely to generate any confidence. The Patriots are second in the league in takeaways with 14.

“It’s frustrating,” coach Marc Trestman said. “It’s frustrating because we don’t practice that way. We work very hard at ball security. Certainly with any team it’s going to be a priority. It’s not just a priority with us.

“When it doesn’t happen, it just makes everything more difficult, when you turn the ball over. It makes everything much easier when you take care of it and you’re able to take it away, and certainly that’s what the Patriots are feeling right now.”

Normally dependable running back Matt Forte even had a big turnover that cost the Bears a loss in Carolina.

“It’s one of the main things we talk about, is taking care of the football, protecting the quarterback and establishing the run game,” Forte said. “In the games that we’ve won, we’ve done that. In the games that we’ve lost, we haven’t done it.

“It’s not a secret formula to winning games or how we play well. We just have to play consistently, like when we’ve won the games that we have won.”

It has been Cutler, though, whose play has dragged the offense down the most, despite a career-best passer rating of 94.4. Trestman remains firmly behind Cutler, pointing to his 67.3 completion percentage as another indication he is getting the offense.

“You can see the numbers, where Jay is with his rating, where Jay is with his completion percentage,” Trestman said. “There’s a lot of movement in the right direction.

“The change and the improvement is certainly not over. We’re continuing to work on that, he is. What people need to know about Jay is he’s tremendously invested in this football team. He’s highly intelligent. His work ethic is second to none in the organization, like it is with most quarterbacks. We’re just looking to push to the next level.”

After giving Cutler a seven-year contract, with $54 million in guaranteed money, the number the Bears wanted to see improve was the win total.

Now there are questions whether he’s actually reading defenses correctly. In the loss to Miami, Trestman at halftime took away Cutler’s option to check out of running plays and into pass plays after the Bears ran it only four times in the first half, including only two carries by Forte.

“That’s no different than making a halftime adjustment,” Trestman said. “We have some runs that are attached to throws and others that are just called runs, so at halftime we said regardless of the front we’re getting (from the defense), we think we can run the ball this half, so that’s what we decided to do.

“It wasn’t as if we were handcuffing anybody or taking things out of the quarterback hands; that wasn’t the intent at all.”

Except, it sure sounds that way.

“To be very specific, the intent was we wanted to make sure when we called a run, we felt that we had the advantage and the advantage was to run it,” Trestman said.

“Jay didn’t make any wrong decisions. They did a good job of defending those decisions and so we made an adjustment to attack them a different way in the second half.”

Regardless of how it’s sliced, it sounded like another problem area for Cutler and something else the Bears can’t afford to have if they hope to climb back to .500 by beating New England.

NOTES: The Patriots have an 8-4 lead in the series against the Bears. New England has won the last three — and six of the last seven, including a 17-13 victory when the last game was played in Foxborough in 2006. … Rookie S Brock Vereen may or may not start, depending on the status of S Chris Conte. On Wednesday, Conte seemed over his shoulder issues and went through a full practice, but Vereen will play in a safety rotation regardless. … Bears defensive coordinator Mel Tucker found himself answering questions about why DE Jared Allen sat on the bench for a long drive in the third quarter against Miami. Allen, himself, seemed a bit at a loss to explain it. “Going forward, obviously we want him in the game,” Tucker said. “He’s been a highly productive player for us. It was an unusual series; we had a lot of short-yardage situations. We didn’t really get into third-and-long. We visited with him about it and we’re ready to move on. We’ll be fine.” … With Tom Brady perceived as a less mobile quarterback than the Bears have been used to facing, a pass rush up the middle will be key. Last week, Jeremiah Ratliff gave an indication he can provide it with a career-best 3 1/2 sacks. “He was just relentless,” Tucker said. “He’s just very impressive. He plays very, very hard and he’s very strong in the run game and also in the pass game. He’s a guy that you know what you’re going to get day in and day out.”