DETROIT -- Matt Forte almost made it out, but once again, his path was blocked.

As reporters huddled at different lockers trying to make sense out of a desultory 34-17 loss to the Detroit Lions, Forte put on his sports coat and grabbed a camouflage rolling bag and headed toward the door.

But one reporter stopped him, and then the rest piled on, and Forte had to talk about a game in which he had little impact aside from a nifty 22-yard screen catch-and-run on the first drive of the game, which just happened to be the only good one of the game.

Forte finished with five carries, which tied a career low, for six yards. He also caught six passes for 52 yards.

Was it too tough to run the ball against the Lions’ front four?

"I don’t know," Forte said. "Because we didn’t run it."

The Lions came in with the No. 1 rushing defense, allowing 70.7 yards per game, so the Bears knew it wasn’t going to be a ground-and-pound game. But five carries for Forte puts a lot of pressure on the quarterback, Jay Cutler, who now has 20 turnovers for the season.

"It’s hard," Cutler said. "You know, I think we went into the game thinking some of these shorter passes would be an extension of our run game, some longer handoffs. It worked early on, and then we had to try and push the ball down the field a little bit."

He’s right, though it seemed like the screen passes stopped working before the Bears got behind by double digits.

"That’s what defenses do, they adjust," Forte said.

As it often happens, coach Marc Trestman sent in run-pass options, but the Bears scuttled run calls at the line. That’s normal.

"Forte only had five runs, but we probably called 15 for him," left tackle Jermon Bushrod said. "When we got up there to run these plays, it wasn’t a correct look or we had too many people in the box or they dropped a safety or they did this. It’s a lot that goes into these plays that we run. If it doesn’t look good to the quarterback, we’ve got to go out to the edge."

Forte said he didn’t know exactly how many runs were called, but said they shifted some to "smoke throws," screens to Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery.

"Brandon and Alshon did a good job on that, scored on one of them," he said.

That would be Jeffery’s first of two touchdowns in the first quarter, a screen he took 10 yards for the score.

After 12 games, Forte leads the Bears in rushing attempts and yards (201 for 828), and catches (78 for 650). His eight total touchdowns ties him with Marshall for the team lead.

Though running backs always lose carries when a team is behind, when your best player becomes a forgotten man in a must-win game, it’s a sure sign of fundamental problems on a fundamentally poor football team.

"The talent we have on the team, we’re definitely underachieving right now," Forte said. "Some guys got to do some soul-searching for the rest of the season to plan on how they’re going to play the rest of these games."

As for the offense, which continues to disappoint, Forte said he didn’t have the time to explain.

"I could stand here all day and talk about it," he said. "I’m not going to point the finger or nothing like that. There’s a thousand things you can talk about, penalties, all kind of stuff, shooting ourselves in the foot a lot of times."

With four games remaining, it’s obvious all the talk about the potential of the Bears’ high-powered offense was just that, talk. The Bears are averaging just 21 points per game.

"We’ve talked about it all year long," Forte said. "We got a lot of talent, but talent only gets you so far. You can look at it like that, you can have the most talent in the world, but if you don’t put it to work out there, you ain’t going to do anything with it."