LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Matt Forte confirmed Friday that suffered an MCL sprain in the Chicago Bears’ loss to Minnesota on Nov. 1, the same injury that sidelined Forte for the final four games in 2011.

“Same injury,” Forte said.

The veteran running back is questionable for Sunday’s game in St. Louis after he was a limited participant at practice this week. Forte sat out the Bears’ 22-19 win over the Chargers on Monday Night Football.

“I feel a lot better than last week,” Forte said. “A ton of improvement. Probably, I don’t know, like 80 percent more improvement. Because I wasn’t running or anything last week and it was really inflamed. I still have fluid in my knee and stuff like that. But it takes time for that to get out. So I’m just taking it day by day, really, to see where I get from there.

Don’t expect Forte to rush back prematurely.

“It’s a fine line, because if you’re not fully healed and you go out there, you might injure it worse or something else,” Forte said. “So it’s hard to tell. If you aren’t fully healed up and you go out there, then you can take one step forward and get injured and take five steps backward. That’s obviously not good to come back for one game and then be out for five or six. So you obviously don’t want to do something like that.”

Then there is the issue of Forte’s future. The soon-to-be 30-year-old running back will be a free agent in the spring after the Bears balked at extending his contract. Forte cannot afford to be hurt when he tests the open market.

“Yeah … the most important factor is the future,” Forte said. “Because you go out there for one game and then ruin the rest of your season and maybe your career, then that’s a big factor. There’s a lot of football left to be played. So you don’t want to chance it for one game. That’s a lot of it. So that’s also a determining factor like we’ve been talking about.”

Forte insisted, however, that rookie Jeremy Langford’s performance in San Diego (142 all-purpose yards) has not affected his timeline to return.

“I just worry about myself, man, and how I play out there,” Forte said. “He did a good job. That’s obviously why he’s in the NFL for a reason, because he has talent. He did a good job out there.”