I don’t know about you, but I learned a lot of tough lessons about fantasy football this year: pre-draft rankings, draft strategy, waiver pickups … the list goes on and on. Here are some of those things we may have discovered this season. (Pre-draft rankings are based on Sports Illustrated publication, and fantasy points and final rankings are based on ESPN standard scoring league).

PRE-DRAFT RANKINGS: No fantasy publication is going to have it all right when it comes to ranking players. There’s gonna be some good calls (Aaron Rodgers) and some bad calls (Steve Slaton), but it’s all about how you deal with them. Rodgers became by far the best QB, while Slaton was benched for ball control issues, and his numbers weren’t that stellar to begin with.

The best advice is to look at multiple publications. You can’t depend on a single guide to be your fantasy bible; if you do, you won’t be able to make educated decisions on draft day. If you have a general idea of what the sportswriters are saying across the board, you can get a better idea of what’s actually going to work well for you. In my opinion, a single fantasy magazine can give you good advice about 50 percent of the time, and I don’t think any of us wants that to be our fantasy fate.

That said, the best advice you can take is your own. If you have a good understanding of the fantasy world, you can better make your own draft rankings. It’s not bad to take advice from professional publications, especially if you don’t know much about fantasy football, but the more you know, the better off you’ll be.

For some perspective, here’s some pre-draft rankings followed by final season rankings.

QB: Kurt Warner (5, 13); Matt Schaub (13, 5); Trent Edwards (14, 32); Matt Ryan (9, 19); Matt Cassel (10, 20); Ben Roethlisberger (17, 9).

RB: Chris Johnson (16, 1); LaDainian Tomlinson (6, 20); Ray Rice (39, 4); Thomas Jones (18, 5); Matt Forte (8, 17); Felix Jones (21, 41).

WR: DeSean Jackson (16, 4); Miles Austin (41, 3); Greg Jennings (4, 20); Anquan Boldin (5, 24); Sidney Rice (67, 8); Eddie Royal (23, 85); Terrell Owens (14, 26).

TE: Vernon Davis (14, 1); Jason Witten (3, 8); Anthony Fasano (5, 29); Heath Miller (18, 8).

WAIVER PICKUPS: I saved my fantasy season based on close monitoring of the waiver wire and the knowledge to know who to look out for. In one league of mine (with a $50 buy-in), I drafted six WRs on draft day. By the end of the season, I had just one of them left on my team (Boldin). So how did I win the league championship and $300? The waiver wire. Miles Austin and Sidney Rice saved my season at the WR slot, as I focused on RBs and QBs on draft day.

In my championship matchup in that league, having Jerome Harrison and Jamaal Charles allowed me to take out the No. 1 seed in the matchup. But is there more to waiver pickups than just hoping you get the priority waiver claim? Absolutely. I didn’t pick up Charles after his first big week; I picked him up BEFORE it. It was the same with Harrison. Going into the season, it was my opinion that three marquee RBs would falter: Jamal Lewis, Larry Johnson and Joseph Addai. I was wrong about Addai, but when Lewis went on IR, I immediately picked up Harrison. When Johnson was suspended, I grabbed Charles. Then they had their big weeks, and while everyone else was hunting them down on the waiver wire, I was sitting pretty with the big boys already on my roster. That kind of thinking can really help you create a great fantasy team.

While it’s crucial to be paying attention beforehand, you also have to keep watching the wire for big performances. Every year, guys come out of nowhere and put up big numbers. All it takes is checking the waivers once a week to see who performed well the previous week. If you’re watching those guys, as well as monitoring your own roster, you can use that balance to build a great team. Of my 18 roster spots in my big league, 11 spots were different on championship day than on draft day.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Well, I hope you all had a good year in fantasy football. Mine ended on a good note, upsetting the No. 1 seed in my pool, a team that beat me in both regular season matchups, to win me $300. In my second league, I didn’t even make the playoffs. In my third league, I took the No. 1 seed into the playoffs to lose in the first round. So with that kind of variability, it’s true that anything can happen, but if you maximize the factors which you can control, you can come out on top. Now, we must suffer the painfully long wait until next year.