The Bears (3-4) come to Foxoboro Sunday in desperate need of a win. If that's to happen, a lot has to go right for Chicago, starting with the play of quarterback Jay Cutler, who has been wildly inconsistent this season. He has downfield playmakers Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, but the Patriots know that in order to make the Bears' offense one-dimensional, they first have to stop running back Matt Forte.

“That’s the biggest thing defensively -- being able to tackle,” nose tackle Vince Wilfork said, via ESPN.com. “And that’s part of our problem, too; sometimes we miss tackles, we overplay some things and it costs us. It costs us big.

“No matter how you slice it, we have to be able to tackle. We have to be able to get off the field on third down, in the red area, just make them kick field goals. The team has played good football in the red area. I think that’s one of those things that helped us last week was in the red area they kicked field goals instead of us giving up seven points. That’s big. That’s probably the only thing we did well.”

The Patriots will be without linebacker Jerod Mayo, who is out for the season, as well as defensive end Chandler Jones, who could be sidelined a month.

“Who said we don’t have Chandler?” Wilfork asked, apparently taking a page from the Bill Belichick playbook on talking publicly about injuries. “I don’t know if we are going to have Chandler or not, but when the time comes we will figure it out.

“I’m confident in everybody we put on the field because the way we practice around here, the way guys get taught the same way. We don’t change any type of defense because we lack a person, we don’t care who that person is. Just the next man up, he has to be able to step in and do his job and do it to the fullest.”

The last time the Pats faced the Bears, Forte managed just 25 yards. Wilfork says not to put too much stock in those numbers.

“Last time we played them they were totally different,” he said. “They probably have a couple guys that are still there but for the most part it’s a different team. A team we don’t play a lot. We have to do a lot of study on those guys on tendencies and what they want to do and how they do it, formations, situations in the game, understanding what they want to do.”