LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- Dating all the way back to September, the Chicago Bears brass routinely spouted rhetoric about the need to achieve a more balanced run-pass ratio. Yet the Bears haven’t delivered.

With the Bears coming off a 34-17 loss at Detroit in which they called 48 passes and eight runs -- a franchise low for runs in a game -- such talk continued at Halas Hall Monday as they prepare to host the Dallas Cowboys Thursday night at Soldier Field.

“We’re just trying to get some balance in our offense. We’ve got to take the mistakes we made last week and turn them into a positive this week,” Bears coach Marc Trestman said. “One of the things we know we have to do is we have to attempt to run the ball more. As I said to our team, ‘We don’t have to run the ball for 7 yards a carry.’ Running the football has a residual effect on a lot of different things. It helps your movement game. It helps your play-action game. We all know these things. We didn’t get it done last week. We admit to that, and we have to move forward.”

That’s all been said before by Trestman, quarterback Jay Cutler, running back Matt Forte and offensive coordinator Aaron Kromer. With an offense featuring one of the league’s best rushers in Forte, the team has called more runs than passes only once this season, and that was during a 38-17 loss to Green Bay Sept. 28.

Even during the team’s five victories, the Bears called 109 runs to 163 passes. The closest to achieving true balance with the run and pass was the club’s Nov. 23 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in which the Bears ran 26 times and called 27 passes.

“It’s of the utmost importance, especially if we’re playing outside with the weather and stuff,” Forte said. “You can’t just sit back there and throw 50 passes a game and expect to win. [Against Detroit], the front four were pinning their ears back. They didn’t have anything to do but pass rush. They’re not respecting the run, and then if you play fake, they’re not going to take the play fake because you haven’t been running the ball. It’s a big part of the play-action game, to keep the defense off of keying on exactly what to do, whether it’s pass rush or trying to stop the run.”

Considering Chicago hadn’t scored a touchdown in the first quarter of six consecutive games until Thursday against the Lions, the Bears have been playing from behind in many cases. But even then, Kromer believes the Bears can still benefit from running the ball because it opens up other facets of the game.

Headed into the matchup with Detroit, the game plan was to hit the Lions with the quick passing game and screens before leaning on the rushing attack.

“But then the game didn’t present itself the way we hoped at that point where we got down by two touchdowns, and then we had to try to throw it to get back in it, we felt,” Kromer said. “A (part) of it is individual game plans. So you’re playing Detroit and they’re giving up very limited amount of run yards and so you say to yourself, ‘Well, but they’re not doing a great job on the perimeter versus the quick screens,' and so like I said, we’re trying to establish that at first, and then start to run it more often as the game went on. But what’s not happening is we’re not in the game when we’re going to start running it more, and then it becomes a passing game.”

That complicates matters for the entire offense.

“It’s hard, it makes things hard,” Cutler said. “If you’re running the ball efficiently and giving the illusion you’re going to run the ball, it definitely helps. You want to throw the ball. You want to throw touchdowns. You want to throw for big yards. But you definitely want to win football games, and I think anyone who has been doing this for a while realizes you’ve got to have the best of both worlds. You’ve got to be able to run the ball. You’ve got to be able to do some play-action. There’s no one out there who can drop back 40 to 50 times consistently and win football games. It’s really hard.”

That’s why the Bears hope to flip the script against Dallas, which currently ranks 22nd against the run (allowing 119.6 yards per game) and is coming off an outing in which LeSean McCoy ripped the defense for 159 yards and a touchdown.

“I trust our offensive line and those guys want to run the ball, too,” Forte said. “I know they were upset about the outcome last week. This defense that we’re going up against is really good against [the run], too. They might be ranked lower, but ranks don’t mean anything in the NFL.”

In 8-degree temperatures with a wind chill of minus-9 at Soldier Field last season against the Cowboys, the Bears racked up 490 total yards, with 149 of that coming courtesy of the rushing attack. The Bears called 32 runs and 36 passes in that outing and will need to achieve similar balance Thursday against the Cowboys to come out on top.

“We’ve got to get some more balance in our football, and part of that is being able to run the ball, not just more effectively, but to allow it to [be in] balance with the other things we do. We’ve got tremendous targets outside,” Trestman said. “We’ve got three tremendous targets and we’ve got a very good running back. We’ve got to continue to work to try to balance all that out. We would have liked to run it more [against Detroit]. It didn’t happen that way, and we’ve got to move forward to Dallas. We could have that discussion forever.”