Giants" Myers Turned Corner in College to Reach N.F.L. Brandon Myers had six receptions for 74 yards last week, but stumbled and fell on a play that was a potential touchdown. It was 2005, and Brandon Myers, then a little-used second-year tight end at Iowa, went home for a weekend in the off-season. Home was Prairie City, Iowa, population 1,680, a hamlet with a grocery, a convenience store, a hardware center and no traffic light. Myers drove five miles out of town, down a dirt road next to cornfields, and stopped at the house where he grew up with his parents, an older sister and an ever-changing assortment of hogs, horses and sheep. "I knew Brandon was coming to tell me that he wasn't going back to college," his father, Dan Myers, said Thursday. He was having a hard time. He thought he was failing because he wasn't playing and the coaches were on him. They wanted him to change a lot of things. Father and son said little throughout the weekend, visiting Dan's construction work sites and the 200-acre family farm where Brandon learned to drive a combine as a child. Then on Sunday afternoon, when Myers was about to announce that he was not going back to college, his father spoke first. "I told him that years from now, he didn't want to be that guy standing in a bar in a small Iowa town telling everyone how he could have been a big-time football player," Dan Myers said. I said that his college coaches were testing him to see if he would quit or if he would fight back. It was a pretty emotional deal, a turning-point moment. Sitting alongside the Giants" practice field, Myers, who is tied for the team lead in receptions this season, also recalled the 2005 conversation. "My dad told me not to give up on the chance to be something special," he said Thursday. He said I was too young for that. What he did was talk me out of a mistake. Myers returned to campus and the football team's intense off-season workouts. "There was a change in Brandon," said Chris Doyle, Iowa's strength and conditioning coach. He had been a kid from a small town in Iowa trying to figure out things on a higher, more complicated level. But when he committed himself fully, we all saw the big-time player we always thought he could be. By his senior year, Myers was a first-team all-Big Ten selection and then a sixth-round draft choice of the Oakland Raiders in 2009. That's what parents are for, right? Myers said with a smile. They help their kids when they need it most. After a breakout season with the struggling Raiders in 2012, Myers signed a one-year free-agent contract hoping he could become the latest in a long succession of lesser-known Giants tight ends who had big roles in the offense (see Jake Ballard and Kevin Boss). With the Giants" talented wide receivers Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz working the sideline routes, a tight end has plenty of room in the middle of the field to find open space. That is exactly where Myers was in the second quarter Sunday during the Giants" game against the Denver Broncos. Eli Manning tossed a pass to Myers, who caught the ball near the Denver 30 with no defender between him and the end zone. Myers turned and began to sprint. About the 20, he tripped without being touched and toppled to the turf. It was a jarring gaffe. A 45-yard touchdown had become a 27-yard gain, a good outcome, but not the one the Giants, who trailed by 4 points, needed. If Giants fans had not yet learned the new tight end's name, they knew by the end of that hard-to-watch play. "I've never ever done anything like that in a game," Myers, 28, said. Inexcusable. To make matters worse, on the next play, as Myers was running another pattern across the middle with his head turned toward Manning, Denver safety Duke Ihenacho, who had been beaten on the previous play, slammed his shoulder pads into Myers's rib cage. The violent hit drew a penalty. Myers got up slowly. Three plays later, as Myers stood at the 1, a high pass from Manning zipped through his raised hands. As the ball was eluding his grasp, he was drilled in the ribs again. Myers lay on the field for several seconds before he wobbled to his feet and all but staggered to the edge of the Giants" field-goal formation. He was still wavering in his stance as Josh Brown kicked a field goal. Myers, who had six catches for 74 yards in the game, had his ribs wrapped the next day. Asked about the sequence of plays and his injury, Myers shrugged and said: "It's a contact sport. It would have been a lot better if I hadn't fallen down.