'Flat' Jets hope to turn things around against the 'soft' Patriots

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — The Jets are too flat. The Patriots are too soft.

What was once a fight for supremacy in the AFC East now sounds more like a Yelp review for throw pillows.

Losers of their last four games, the New York Jets (2-5) stumble into New England on Sunday to play the Patriots, who have lost six in a row. Even firing coach Robert Saleh didn't snap the Jets out of the slump they have been in since their last win — a 24-3 victory over New England more than a month ago.

Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers said he thought the team's energy was flat in Sunday night's 37-15 loss to Pittsburgh, and newly acquired receiver Davante Adams let them hear it in the locker room after the game.

“Whatever was going on on game day, we all didn’t maybe have the same type of spirit that we usually do,” Rodgers said this week. “I just took it on me. I’ve got to lead with that type of joy and energy each week, so that it gives permission for everybody to enjoy themselves a little bit more.”

The Patriots (1-6) fired six-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Belichick after last season's 4-13 finish, and Jerod Mayo hasn't been able to turn things around — or even show signs of progress. After their 32-16 loss in London to Jacksonville, a team with one win coming into the game, the hard-hitting ex-linebacker said his team was “soft across the board.”

“It's got to challenge you,” tight end Hunter Henry said. “This is a physical game, and you never want that to be our identity, at all. That's a big challenge for us. I've looked at myself in the mirror, and I think everybody else will look at themselves. You never want to be identified that way.”

Rodgers and Adams have spoken about changing the culture of a team that hasn't made the playoffs since 2010 — the NFL’s longest postseason drought. Rodgers said it needn't take several years to turn a franchise around.

“It’s like the story of cutting down a tree and it’s the final blow that actually falls the tree, but you might not see the first thousand hacks at it,” Rodgers said. “Sometimes just takes that one thing to happen. It could be a speech — before a game, after a game, something during the week — that just clicks and the energy of that click can be contagious and I think what you do is you try to set up a lot of different things that are part of the structure and the foundation of a winning culture.

“But until each of those things clicks in, you’re fighting against some of the ghosts of years past.”

Rodgers said that’s the case with every NFL franchise, but some are able to more easily tap into a winning approach.

“It doesn’t just go: Oh, you wake up and I’m on the Green Bay Packers and you got this amazing culture,” the former Packers quarterback said. “I think there’s a lot of things in place. It just needs to completely anchor in and I think there’s some things that happened after the game that were big helpers, as far as some of the culture stuff.”

Mayo hasn’t been able to win like Belichick did on the New England sideline, but the rookie Patriots coach is starting to sound like his predecessor.

In an echo of Belichick’s iconic 2014 “We’re on to Cincinnati” stonewall, Mayo repeated some version of “We’re on to the Jets” six times during his meeting with reporters on Wednesday. He also dropped an “It is what it is” and reached back into the Bill Parcells era with “We are what our record is.”

Belichick was known for his nonresponsive answers during his 24 seasons in New England before he was fired last winter. Mayo has promised to be more open, but he occasionally has had to walk back comments when he has been too honest.

After calling his team soft after the loss in London on Sunday, Mayo clarified on Monday to say that they were “playing soft at the moment.”

“When I say playing soft, that means stopping the run, being able to run the ball, and being able to cover kicks, which we weren’t able to do. Do I think we have the guys in there that can turn this ship around? 100%. But, that comes through hard work, hard work on the practice field, and going out there, just getting better each and every day."

Edge rusher Haason Reddick ended his lengthy contract holdout when he reported to the Jets’ facility Monday. He could make his playing debut with the team Sunday.

Interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich said earlier in the week that he anticipates Reddick being able to play, depending on how he feels physically. Reddick, acquired from Philadelphia in March, is expected to help the Jets offset the loss of Jermaine Johnson, who’s out for the season with a torn Achilles tendon. He also could help create even more opportunities for Will McDonald, whose eight sacks are second in the NFL.

“I’m excited to see him in here,” Rodgers said. “It’s been probably a process for him, so we’re just going to put our arms around him, embrace him, and hope that he can help us out this Sunday.”

AP Pro Football Writer Dennis Waszak Jr. in Florham Park, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

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New York Jets wide receiver Davante Adams (17) is tackled by Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Joey Porter Jr. (24) in the first half of an NFL football game in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo speaks with media ahead of NFL football practice, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024, in Harrow, England. (AP Photo/Steve Luciano)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) passes in the first half of an NFL football game in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye (10) throws during the first half of an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in London. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson (3) greets New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) after an NFL football game in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. The Steelers won 37-15. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Jacksonville Jaguars running back D'Ernest Johnson (2) falls over New England Patriots linebacker Anfernee Jennings (33) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in London. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) tosses the ball as he is brought down by Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith (56) in the first half of an NFL football game in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

RENO, Nev. (AP) — For the first time under President Joe Biden, a federal permit for a new lithium-boron mine has been approved for a Nevada project essential to his clean energy agenda, despite conservationists' vows to sue over the plan they insist will drive an endangered wildflower to extinction.

Ioneer Ltd.'s mine will help expedite production of a key mineral in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles at the center of Biden's push to cut greenhouse gas emissions, administration officials said Thursday in Reno.

Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis said bolstering domestic lithium supplies is "essential to advancing the clean energy transition and powering the economy of the future.”

“This project demonstrates how partnership and collaboration can effectively balance mineral production with the protection of vulnerable species and irreplaceable natural resources,” added Steve Feldgus, principal deputy assistant U.S. interior secretary for land and minerals management.

In the works for nearly eight years, construction of the Rhyolite Ridge mine should start next year in the high desert halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, the Australia-based Ioneer said.

Production is scheduled to begin in 2028 at the mine, which should produce enough lithium for 370,000 vehicles annually for more than two decades, officials said.

It’s unique because it includes a chemical processing facility that will process the lithium on-site instead of having to ship it to China, then back to the U.S. Worldwide demand for lithium is projected to have grown six times by 2030 compared to 2020. The biggest producer of lithium in the world is China, which processes most lithium currently.

“I can say with absolute confidence there are few deposits in the world as impactful as Rhyolite Ridge,” Ioneer Executive Chairman James Calaway said.

The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management issued the permit after the Fish and Wildlife Service concluded — in consultation with the bureau required under the Endangered Species Act — that the mine would not jeopardize the survival of Tiehm's buckwheat.

The service added the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) wildflower with yellow and cream-colored blooms to the list of U.S. endangered species on Dec. 14, 2022, citing mining as the biggest threat to its survival.

The bureau initiated the mine's permitting process five days later. The agencies say Ioneer's subsequent changes to the mine's footprint alleviated concerns about potential harm to the flower.

Environmentalists said Thursday that the mine's final approval was a politically motivated violation of multiple U.S. laws. The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that “litigation is now the only way to stop the Rhyolite Ridge Mine.”

“We need lithium for the energy transition, but it can’t come with a price tag of extinction,” said Patrick Donnelly, the center's Great Basin director. He said Biden's administration “ is abandoning its duty to protect endangered species like Tiehm’s buckwheat and it’s making a mockery of the Endangered Species Act."

Fewer than 30,000 of the plants remain in Nevada at the only place they're known to exist in the world across eight sub-populations that combined cover 10 acres (4 hectares) — an area equal to the size of about eight football fields.

USFWS said the project — including the infrastructure and waste rock dump — will come within 15 feet (5 meters) of the buckwheat and result in the loss of some of its designated critical habitat that is home to neighboring bees and other pollinators integral to its reproduction.

But the service said the operation will cause no direct disturbance to individual plants and that reclamation, mitigation and monitoring promised in the blueprint should provide necessary protections for it to coexist with the open pit mine deeper than the length of a football field.

“I don’t think the mine at all will lead to the extinction of Tiehm’s buckwheat," Ioneer CEO Bernard Rowe said Thursday. "If anything, I think we now are going to be part of the solution because we are going to continue providing significant resources ... to ensure it doesn’t become extinct.”

Construction of the mine is expected to employ about 500 workers, with about 350 full-time employees when the mine is fully operational — a boon for tiny Esmeralda County with a population of about 1,000.

Esmeralda County Commissioner Ralph Keys said the rural county that's now the least populous in Nevada was its most populated during the gold and silver boom in the late 1800s.

“This is going to put us back on the map,” he said Thursday.

Opponents of the project say it’s the latest example of Biden’s administration running roughshod over U.S. protections for native wildlife, rare species and sacred tribal lands in the name of slowing climate change by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and bolstering national security by easing reliance on foreign sources of critical minerals.

Daniel-Davis denied environmentalists’ claims that the administration is rushing to develop so-called “green energy” projects at the expense of increased risk to troubled species.

“The urgency of climate change and the need to move to a clean energy economy has been critical to everything we have worked on since day one in the Biden-Harris administration,” she said. “Does that make us look at projects like this or others that would support transition to a clean energy economy differently? I have to say categorically, no.”

Nevada is home to the only existing lithium mine in the U.S. Another is currently under construction near the Oregon line 220 miles (354 kilometers) north of Reno — Lithium Americas' Thacker Pass mine.

FILE - Tiehm's buckwheat grows in a greenhouse in Gardnerville, Nevada, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. The endangered desert wildflower stands in the way of a mining company's plans to dig for lithium to help speed production of batteries for electric cars and other green energy projects. (AP Photo/Scott Sonner, File)