LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- Held to an abysmal 54 total first-half net yards of offense on Sunday, the Chicago Bears completely abandoned the ground game in the opening 30 minutes, allowing tailback Matt Forte to carry the football only twice for 11 yards.

How did this happen?

“You know, there were a couple of reasons,” Bears head coach Marc Trestman said on Monday. “We only ran 18 plays. That would be one. We didn't convert on third down to roll anything over. We had two called runs, we had two runs called with options to throw and we had another two called where we pulled the ball with an option to throw, as well. Eighteen plays. If you don't roll it over you can't get in sync.

“We threw it a little bit more early, but that wasn't the plan. The plan was to kind of do it the way we did it in the third quarter. And that's what we went back to doing. We took some of the options off and we handed the football off and we got more of what we would expect of our offense -- a good, solid drive.”

Forte finished the game with 12 rushing attempts for 49 yards, the third time in 2014 opposing defenses have limited Forte to under 50 yards rushing. The Pro Bowl running back did catch six passes for 60 yards out of the backfield, and through seven weeks Forte leads the Bears with 52 receptions.