Trying to analyze early season college football is a damned near impossible task. Consider: When the pre-season S&P+ numbers came out, North Carolina and Ole Miss ranked 37th and 23rd respectively.
Those numbers are imprecise, and (particularly in the case of Ole Miss) probably more optimistic than human prognosticators. But I think they’re in the ballpark - both teams were expected to be top 40 teams, and perhaps fringe top 25 teams.
And then Cal beat them both, and we all got super excited. And we should get excited when Cal unexpectedly wins games! Wins are awesome!