This One Turned Out to Be a Pretty Good Hit (J.J. Watt Auto Rookie)

Earlier this year, I was on a bit of a football kick and decided to purchase a pack of 2011 Panini Gold Standard Football. I don't think I ever got around to posting about it, but I pulled an awesome Marshall Faulk 1/1 auto, which made me a very happy casual football collector.

With that one CLEARLY being the hit of the pack, it was easy for me to gloss over most of the other cards. One of those that I didn't think much about, even as a Texans fan, was a J.J. Watt autographed rookie card /499.

As I was buying football, one thing I noticed was that all of the products seemed to be LOADED with rookie hits. At the time I was buying them, the season was already over, so I had the advantage of seeing how well most of these rookies did in year 1, and most of them wouldn't be heard from too much again.

Well, one year later, we are only five games into the season, and already, this guy is leading the league in batted passes with 5, and is also leading the league in sacks with 8.5. To show Watt's improvement, he had just 5.5 sacks during the ENTIRE 2011 season.

This dude's a beast.