Bears great Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis elected to Hall of Fame on first ballot

The greatest Bears player since their iconic Super Bowl XX team more than three decades ago received the highest honor Saturday: Brian Urlacher was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Urlacher and Baltimore’s Ray Lewis were the players in the conversation for the best middle linebacker of their era and it is fitting both were voted in on their first ballot and will be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, together on Aug. 4 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium. It’s the first time two middle linebackers will be inducted in the same class.

Wide receivers Randy Moss and Terrell Owens and safety Brian Dawkins were the other three modern-era players voted in. Senior committee players Jerry Kramer and Robert Brazile and contributor Bobby Beathard, a longtime Redskins and Chargers general manager, were voted in.

Urlacher, 39, becomes the 28th Hall of Famer to represent the Bears for all or the primary portion of their career, the most in the NFL and the first since defensive end Richard Dent was inducted in 2011. Urlacher and Lewis brings to 28 the number of modern-era linebackers in the Hall. Five of those 28 were Bears, a nod to the history of the position for the franchise from George Connor to Bill George, Dick Butkus, Mike Singletary and now Urlacher.

Lovie Smith arrived in 2004 with a scheme that accentuated Urlacher’s freakish athletic ability for a player with such a large frame – 6-foot-4, 258 pounds. The next year he was named the league’s defensive player of the year, becoming the fifth player in history to win both awards. The next season, in 2006, Urlacher helped lead the Bears to Super Bowl XLI.

Named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 2000s, Urlacher was selected to the Pro Bowl eight times and was first team All-Pro five times. In 13 seasons, he amassed 1,358 tackles, 41½ sacks, 22 interceptions, two touchdowns, 90 passes defensed, 12 forced fumbles and 16 fumble recoveries.

Personnel boss Mark Hatley made the decision to draft Urlacher, who had played safety in college. The Bears knew they were getting a player who could transform their defense but initially weren’t sure how to deploy him.

“We knew we would like to play him at the Mike (middle) linebacker, but the problem was he had been a safety, and we didn’t want to stick him there right away and beat him up and lose him and ruin an excellent prospect,” defensive coordinator Greg Blache said. “We started him off at the Sam (strong-side) linebacker position, where everything is coming at you from one direction in the traffic, and we played him at the Mike in the nickel situation, where 95 percent of it was passing. So he was getting a feel for it but he wasn’t getting in the heavy traffic with the guards coming on him and combination blocks … because it’s a whole different beast when you’re playing 12 to 15 yards deep as a safety and you move up to 5 yards from the line of scrimmage with the 300-pounders.

NFC Central to win the division with a 13-3 record and qualify for the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons.

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Russia strikes back as Syrian rebels take credit for shooting down fighter jet, killing pilot

It also raises questions about the source of the apparent “man-portable air-defense system,” or MANPADS, a shoulder-fired weapon for which Syria’s rebels have repeatedly pleaded from their international backers. The United States in particular has been strongly opposed, fearing that antiaircraft weapons could fall into the hands of the country’s extremist groups.

“The United States has never provided MANPAD missiles to any group in Syria, and we are deeply concerned that such weapons are being used,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said, according to Reuters.

Saraqeb has come under heavy bombardment from Russian and Syrian warplanes in recent days as pro-government forces try to recapture a strategic highway linking Damascus to Aleppo. The White Helmets civil defense group said Saturday that seven civilians had been killed in at least 25 strikes on largely residential areas, some of them using barrel bombs.

In the hours after the Russian jet was downed, Moscow also claimed to have killed more than 30 militants in the area, Interfax reported. The agency quoted the Defense Ministry as saying it used “precision-guided weapons” to carry out the strike, but without giving details.

The use of MANPADS in a province where Turkish forces are nominally present could also anger Russia. The two countries have improved ties and cooperated in Syria in recent months, but relations hit an all-time low in 2015 when Turkey, a longtime supporter of the country’s rebels, shot down a Russian warplane inside Syria.

Turkey set up observation points in Idlib last year, ostensibly to monitor the fighting between the rebels and government forces, but it has also been accused of fostering closer ties with HTS.

Moscow entered Syria’s civil war in 2015 on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. And its intervention turned the tide of the brutal war, allowing Syria’s government to recapture the city of Aleppo from the rebels and beat back militants in other parts of the country.

But Idlib remains under militant control, and HTS exercises significant influence even over areas it does not formally hold. 

“Mahmoud Turkmani, the military commander of the HTS air defence battalion, managed to shoot down a military plane by an anti-aircraft MANPADS in the sky of Saraqeb in the Idlib countryside in late afternoon today,” Ebaa News, the unofficial media outlet used by HTS, reported Saturday.

“That is the least revenge we can offer to our people, and those occupiers should know that our sky is not a picnic,” Mahmoud reportedly said.

Idlib province is also home to more than a million displaced people from around Syria, and renewed fighting has pushed close to a quarter of a million residents to flee again since mid-December, cramming into ­already-packed houses and tented settlements across the region.

Despite repeated appeals to their international backers, rebel groups in Syria have never had a sustained supply of MANPADS. But they have occasionally used weapons captured from the battlefield. Rebels have shot down Syrian fighter jets and other Russian military aircraft. In August 2016, a Russian transport helicopter was shot down as it was flying over Saraqeb, killing all five people aboard.

Videos circulating online showed the alleged crash site of the fighter jet in Saraqeb, which the United Nations said has recently suffered “heavy shelling and aerial bombardment.” According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, an airstrike on a potato market there last week killed at least 16 people, and the town’s hospital also was attacked.

Russia and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights each said the pilot on Saturday was killed after exchanging fire with the rebels.

He communicated that he had ejected from the aircraft in an area held by HTS but later “died in a fight with the terrorists,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry also said it was working with Turkey to bring the pilot’s body home. 

Syria’s war has raged for seven years, and half a million people have been killed. The conflict has sucked in world powers — such as Russia but also the United States and Iran. 

Loveluck reported from Kilis, Turkey. Zakaria Zakaria in Kilis and Andrew Roth and Anton Troianovski in Moscow contributed to this report.

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