Jaxson Dart received a video message from a familiar face, one who knows what it takes to be a franchise quarterback for the New York Giants.
And one also from Ole Miss, at that.
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New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart, center, holds up a shirt with general manager Joe Schoen, left, and head coach Brian Daboll, right, at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart speaks to reporters at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first round draft picks Abdul Carter, left, and Jaxson Dart shake hands during an NFL football press conference at the team's training facility in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants' first round draft picks Abdul Carter and Jaxson Dart pose with shirts at an NFL football press conference at the team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart, center, holds up a shirt with general manager Joe Schoen, left, and head coach Brian Daboll, right, at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart speaks to reporters at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
Two-time Super Bowl winner Eli Manning welcomed Dart to the team Friday, a day after the Giants traded back into the first round to take the former Mississippi star — who broke Manning's school record for career yards passing — with the 25th overall pick.
“Jaxson, congratulations on being drafted by the New York Giants,” Manning said as a smiling Dart watched the video message. “Obviously, there's a strong connection between Ole Miss quarterbacks and the Giants.”
Manning was the No. 1 pick of the Chargers in 2004 out of Mississippi and was traded to the Giants shortly after he was selected. The late Charlie Conerly, who played at Ole Miss in the 1940s, helped lead the Giants to an NFL championship in 1956. He's a member of the franchise's Ring of Honor and his No. 42 is retired by the team.
“I'm excited that that tradition will continue with you,” Manning told Dart of the Ole Miss-Giants connection. “So, I'm not going to sit here and tell you what a great organization the Giants are. It will not take you long to figure that out by yourself.”
The Giants took Penn State defensive end Abdul Carter with the No. 3 overall pick Thursday night. Then, New York traded its second-round pick, a third-rounder this year and a third-round pick next year to Houston to get the 25th pick and take Dart.
While playing at Mississippi, Dart got to know Manning and his family — and hoped to someday follow the success he had in the NFL.
“He was actually one of the first people to reach out to me yesterday when the news broke,” Dart said during a news conference at the team's facility to introduce him and Carter. “I think I’ve had such a great connection with him and the Manning family that being able to have them in my corner has been a huge asset.
"And I couldn’t be more blessed to have them in my corner coming here and continuing that in the future.”
With veterans Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston in the quarterback room, Dart won't be rushed onto the field.
He'll be able to sit, for at least a season, and develop while also picking Manning's brain about life in the NFL.
“I would be kind of a fool not to,” Dart said. “Really, any questions that I have, I think he’s a great person to rely on and kind of lean on. He’s been here, played at the highest level, won Super Bowls, and for me, I want to chase greatness just like he did.”
Manning ended his message to Dart by saying he enjoyed rooting for him during his three seasons at Mississippi “and I look forward to rooting for you for the Giants for the next 15 years.”
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart speaks to reporters at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first round draft picks Abdul Carter, left, and Jaxson Dart shake hands during an NFL football press conference at the team's training facility in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants' first round draft picks Abdul Carter and Jaxson Dart pose with shirts at an NFL football press conference at the team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart, center, holds up a shirt with general manager Joe Schoen, left, and head coach Brian Daboll, right, at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
New York Giants first-round draft pick Jaxson Dart speaks to reporters at a news conference at the NFL football team's training center in East Rutherford, N.J., Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers Tuesday, nearly 3% of its entire workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence.
Hardest hit was the tech giant's home state of Washington, where Microsoft informed state officials it was cutting 1,985 workers tied to its Redmond headquarters, many of them in software engineering and product management roles.
Microsoft said the layoffs will be across all levels, teams and geographies but the cuts will focus on reducing the number of managers. Notices to employees began going out on Tuesday.
The mass layoffs come just weeks after Microsoft reported strong sales and profits that beat Wall Street expectations for the January-March quarter, which investors took as a dose of relief during a turbulent time for the tech sector and U.S. economy.
“I think many people have this conception of layoffs as something that struggling companies have to do to save themselves, which is one reason for layoffs but it’s not the only reason,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist at workplace reviews site Glassdoor. “Big tech companies have trimmed their workforces as they rearrange their strategies and pull back from the more aggressive hiring that they did during the early post-pandemic years.”
Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. About 55% of those workers were in the U.S.
Microsoft announced a smaller round of performance-based layoffs in January. But the 3% cuts will be Microsoft's biggest since early 2023, when the company cut 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce, joining other tech companies that were scaling back their pandemic-era expansions.
Microsoft's chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said on an April earnings call that the company was focused on “building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.” She also said the headcount in March was 2% higher than a year earlier, and down slightly compared to the end of last year.
The layoffs are hitting all parts of Microsoft's business, including the video game platform Xbox and the career networking site LinkedIn. Some laid-off workers and the executives who made the cuts took to LinkedIn to talk about them.
“This is the first time I’ve had to lay people off to support business goals that aren’t my own," wrote Scott Hanselman, a vice president of Microsoft's developer community. “I often have trouble separating my beliefs with the system that I participate in and am complicit in. These are people with dreams and rent and I love them and I want them to be OK.”
He added: "This is a day with a lot of tears.”
The company didn't give a specific reason for the layoffs, only that they were part of "organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.”
Microsoft has said it has been spending $80 billion in the fiscal year that ends in June on building data centers and other infrastructure it needs to develop its artificial intelligence technology, though it has also scaled back some of those projects. Those AI tools have been pitched as changing the way people work, including in Microsoft's own workplaces.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an AI event last month at Meta's headquarters that “maybe 20, 30% of the code” for some of Microsoft's coding projects “are probably all written by software.”
Even if AI is increasingly helping Microsoft software engineers, however, doesn't necessarily mean it's a chief reason for laying them off.
“When these big tech companies say that they’re trimming management layers, that doesn’t really sound like it’s being driven by AI,” Zhao said. “You’re not expecting ChatGPT to replace the manager.”
Instead, cutting management ranks can often reflect a broader strategy.
“As companies grow quickly, you need to add managers who can coordinate across teams or within teams,” Zhao said. “But it’s not until things start to slow down that people start asking questions about how necessary those roles are.”
Of the laid-off employees in Washington, about 1,500 worked in person at Microsoft's offices and 475 worked remotely, according to the notice the company sent to the state employment agency. Their official last day will be in July.
After hiring sprees that started when the COVID-19 pandemic spiked demand for online services, many tech companies are still in a process of “coming back to Earth and trying to kind of rebalance some things,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed, the job listings website.
And while Microsoft isn't as directly affected by President Donald Trump's wide-ranging tariffs as some of its peers, it must also think more broadly about economic conditions that could play out over the coming months and years.
“This could be an effort to think more long term,” Stahle said. “If you have to go out and buy groceries and spend more on groceries and produce that are more expensive due to tariffs, you maybe don’t have as much discretionary income to spend on electronics or video game systems.”
FILE - A Microsoft sign and logo are pictured at the company's headquarters, Friday, April 4, 2025, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond, File)
