Smith's and Roddy White's seasons. Smith scored 176 points. White scored 173 points. Both played 16 games, so essentially, Steve Smith was 0.18 points better than Roddy White every week, right? Wrong. In fact, White outscored Smith in 8 of the 15 weeks in which they both played. So which one actually had the better season?

Info-tainment! Sidebar As a kid, I loved those "Schoolhouse Rock!" videos. I linked to this last year and am doing it again as a tribute, while adding this obscure piece of TMR Trivia: I once went to a bar in L.A. to see Bob Dorough in concert. Bob, of course, wrote and performed all of the "Schoolhouse Rock!" songs. So yeah, don't wanna brag or anything, but I've actually seen "Conjunction Junction" live.

Because three is a magic number and all, there are three overarching themes we'll discuss in constructing your team; consistency, probability, and the fact that nobody knows anything. By the end, you should have a pretty good idea of how to construct a roster with an eye toward the ultimate goal of winning week to week.

Before we give you that foundation, let's understand the league in its current state.

A word about offense

Quick impression. Who am I?

"Yawwwn. Whateves, dude."

I'm every person in America when Tom Brady passed Dan Marino's 1984 record of 5,084 passing yards. Brady finished with 5,235 yards (276 of which went to Chad Ochocinco!). It was an amazing season for Brady and he bested a mark that Marino had held for almost 30 years.

And no one cared.

Because Drew Brees had already broken the mark (and finished with 5,476 yards) and, in fact, if you count Eli Manning's 4,933 yards as "close enough," there were four different quarterbacks to get to 5,000 yards last year. Four! Entering 2011, only two quarterbacks in NFL history had ever passed for 5,000 yards in a season (Marino, and Brees had also done it once, with 5,069 in 2008).

I know, I hear ya. "Yeah, yeah, Berry. The league is becoming more offensive. We get it." But I don't think you do. It's not more offensive, it's the most offensive it's ever been. Quarterbacks were to the NFL in 2011 what Howard Stern was to the radio in the '80s. The offensive stats from last year are video-game level ridiculous. League-wide passer rating (84.3) and touchdown-to-interception ratio (1.472:1) were both at historic levels, topping the records that were set just the year before.

Got more mind-numbing numbers for you. Games averaged an all-time high of 693.7 total net yards per game, surpassing, once again, last year's record. Not surprisingly, high-flying passing offenses fueled much of that, with an average of 459.4 net passing yards per game, also an all-time high (443.1 in 2010). We had three quarterbacks throw for more than 40 touchdowns. No other season had ever had more than one quarterback throw for 40-plus scores.

Last year, there were 121 individual 300-yard passing games, which was, say it with me class, the most in any NFL season ever. Dude. One hundred and twenty one! That's a lot. There were also a record-setting 18 individual 400-yard passing performances.

More records: 11,356 points were scored and games averaged 44.4 points, the highest average in 46 years.

For those who say that you can't draw conclusions from just one year, I say fair enough. We know to be wary of small or polluted sample sizes when drawing big-picture conclusions. But, as a way of leading to our first big theme, the quarterback position, I offer this little stat, courtesy of Jason Vida of ESPN Stats & Information: There have been five seasons in NFL history when quarterbacks completed at least 60 percent of their passes: 2007 to 2011. As in, the past five seasons. At some point, kids, it stops being random and it starts being a trend.

Not only are QBs completing more passes, they are throwing more in general. Per Vida: Teams dropped back to pass on 59.1 percent of scrimmage plays in 2011. In 2010, it was 58.8 percent. In 2009, it was 57.7 percent. In 2008, it was 57.0 percent. In fact, QBs averaged a combined 7.20 yards per pass attempt in 2011, the highest since 1963.

Personally, I think it's a result of superior talent, advanced coaching and the fact that, if a defender breathes on someone more than 5 yards from the line of scrimmage, they'll throw a flag on it. But whatever the reason, it's a QB league. And you're gonna need a good one. Why? I'm glad you asked.

Quarterbacks

In an ESPN standard 10- team league, not every quarterback is likely to be rostered, so, the thinking goes, you can not only wait on your starting quarterback, but you don't even need to draft a backup since you can always grab one from the waiver wire during a bye week or injury, right? [Editor's Note; the preceeding paragraph was altered on June 25 to better reflect the author's intended advice.]

Well, sort of. You can. But the problem is, so can everyone else.

Simply having a good quarterback isn't enough anymore because good is the new mediocre. You need a great quarterback. It's the same phenomenon we discussed in fantasy baseball this preseason; yes, starting pitching is deep, but it's deep across the board. Everyone is going to be able to get good pitching, so if you don't want to end up in the middle of the pack, you've got to have outstanding pitching. It's the same with quarterbacks in fantasy football.

Your best bet at ensuring a weekly edge is at quarterback. Very simply, it's not so much about the fact that they are the highest-scoring players, it's that, as a whole, they are more consistent year to year and week to week than any other position.

In last season's Manifesto, I looked at the top 10 quarterbacks who were drafted on ESPN.com in each of the previous three seasons. Then I looked at the top 10 scoring quarterbacks for each of those three seasons. Let's update the results now to include 2011.

In 2009, seven of the top 10 drafted quarterbacks finished the year as top-10 QBs (Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Philip Rivers, Tony Romo, Matt Schaub and Donovan McNabb).

In 2010, once again, seven of the top 10 drafted quarterbacks finished the year as a top-10 guy (Brees, Rodgers, P. Manning, Brady, Schaub, Rivers and Joe Flacco, who was drafted ninth among quarterbacks and tied for tenth in scoring with Eli Manning).

Last year? Six quarterbacks drafted in the top 10 finished the season as top-10 guys (Rodgers, Brees, Brady, Rivers, Romo, Matt Ryan). And, ahem, Michael Vick finished 11th in QB points despite missing three games. On a per-game basis (he added defensively), Vick averaged 17 fantasy points a game and was a top-10 QB. Anyway, not counting Vick, out of a possible 30 quarterbacks drafted top-10 the past three seasons, 20 finished in the top 10.

Certainly,...