Duke tight end Davis Koppenhaver got an earlier start on his college football career than he may have expected three years ago when injuries to upperclassmen Braxton Deaver, Dan Beilinson and Erich Schneider forced him in to the rotation as a freshman. Last season, with Deaver and Schneider back healthy, Koppenhaver took the unusual route of redshirting his second year. Many thought it was due to a lack of available playing time, but Koppenhaver shared the true reason on his Instagram account over the weekend.

"This is a picture of me exactly one year ago," Koppenhaver's post begins. "I was 192 pounds while recovering from back to back surgeries on my shoulder and tonsils plus a surprise recurrence of a cancer I first had when I was 10."

The emergence of his throat cancer when he was ten years old was caught just in time, literally, as he told The Daily Orange two years ago.

“They said that if they would have found it two weeks later, I probably would have died in my sleep,” Koppenhaver said.

A dual-sport athlete in high school, Koppenhaver and his family still found time in their busy schedules to volunteer for the American Cancer Society (Davis' dad, Dave, also beat cancer).

Now, after shoulder surgery a year ago (his second time undergoing surgery on his shoulders), a second defeat of cancer and a weight gain of 40+ pounds in a year's time, Koppenhaver will return to the field for his redshirt sophomore season this fall.

Koppenhaver's full Instagram quote is below: