LAKE FOREST, Ill. – The Bears have lost games, but they haven’t lost hope. Not with a 4-4 record and eight more contests to play, beginning Thursday night against the 49ers in San Francisco.

On the other hand, they realize that if they continue to perform as poorly as they did in embarrassing defeats to the Bengals and Cardinals, their playoff hopes will be gone before Thanksgiving.

Lovie Smith will lead the Bears into San Francisco to face the 49ers Thursday.

“We didn’t finish this second quarter of our season the way we would like,” coach Lovie Smith said after the Bears suffered their third loss in four games following a 3-1 start. “But we’re just halfway through the football season and they don’t announce a winner after halftime.

“You have to come out and play the second half, and we’re happy that we get a chance to play San Francisco as quick as we do. There are a lot of disappointed teams in the league right now. [But] it’s what you do from this point on. One game doesn’t make a season.

“We can talk about all the different things we’re going to do to make it right. [But] it’s on us going into this game to see exactly where we are. We know that, and we have to have our best effort this week.”

If there is to be a turnaround, it has to start with a defense that has gotten absolutely torched in two of its last three games. The Bears allowed the Bengals to score six touchdowns and a field goal on their first seven possessions and the Cardinals to tally four TDs and two field goals on their first six drives.

“This season is so far from over that all of the doomsday talk that I read [Monday] or people are mentioning that they’re hearing, it seems like an overreaction to me,” said linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer. “There’s a whole lot of football left, and just as quickly as things seem to have fallen apart, it’s just that easy to turn it around. [But] we just have to do it. We have to quit talking about it and do it.”

Aches and pains: Had the Bears practiced Monday, cornerback Charles Tillman (shoulder), safeties Al Afalava (shoulder) and Kevin Payne (shoulder), and running back Garrett Wolfe (back) would have sat out with injuries they suffered in Sunday’s 41-21 loss to the Cardinals. Their status for Thursday night’s game is unknown.

“It’s really hard to say on any of those guys,” Smith said. “When you have this quick a turnaround, whenever a player doesn’t finish the game, you’re concerned. We’re concerned about all of those guys that didn’t finish. There’s no more that I can tell you. We’ll get on the practice field [Tuesday] and see from there.”

Tillman’s injury does not appear to be serious.

“I’m hoping he’ll be available Thursday,” Smith said. “He feels a lot better [Monday] than he did [Sunday]. But without practicing [Monday], you don’t know. I’m hopeful he will be [able to play].”

Down to two: With Wolfe injured, the Bears could face the 49ers with two healthy running backs in Matt Forte and Adrian Peterson. When Peterson was hurt earlier in the season, they dressed only two backs in Forte and Wolfe against the Falcons and Bengals.

“We’ve done it before,” Smith said. “That’s an option for us. Right now I don’t know exactly how long Garrett will be out. We have gone with two running backs before, and if we have to do that we will.”

The Bears are not expected to show any interest in controversial running back Larry Johnson, who was cut Monday by the Kansas City Chiefs.

“Any player that’s available, we look at,” Smith said. “That’s been our standard policy throughout. That will be the case with Larry, no more than that. That’s kind of a low priority right now. We’ve been doing a lot of watching of the Chicago Bears and the 49ers up until this point.”

Carved up: It was bad enough that the Bears defense allowed Kurt Warner to throw five touchdown passes and Larry Fitzgerald to catch nine passes for 123 yards and 2 TDs Sunday. But the biggest head-scratcher was permitting the NFL’s lowest-rated rushing attack to compile 182 yards on 31 carries, nearly tripling its average of 64.9 yards entering the game.

“How would I explain that? Again, after a day like [Sunday], I can’t give you a lot of reasons why it happened,” Smith said. “It happened. They came in ready to play.”

The Cardinals defense no doubt can relate. A week earlier, Arizona ranked first in the NFL against the run before yielding 270 yards on the ground in a 34-21 home loss to the Carolina Panthers.

“The week before it happened to them,” Smith said. “They didn’t have a lot of success for whatever reason. This week it worked for them. I’m just hoping that’s the case with us. We’ve played the run fairly well most of the year. We’re sound in our gaps, things like that. We missed tackles [Sunday]. If you want an answer, we missed tackles.”