Is PFF Wise or Foolish for Putting Cal in its 2026 Preseason Top 25?

Pro Football Focus, which provides respected football analyses based on its detailed research, came up with a surprising projection when it placed Cal in its 2026 preseason college football top 25.

Do the folks at PFF see something nobody else does in putting the Golden Bears at No. 21 in their preseason rankings, or are they out of touch?

Here’s what PFF said about Cal:

21. California Golden Bears (2025 Record: 7-6, Lost Hawaii Bowl)

California won seven games in a season for the first time in six years, but the Golden Bears still made a change at head coach by firing Justin Wilcox and hiring Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi. The former defensive lineman for the Golden Bears has plenty of offensive talent to work with, namely the return of quarterback Jaron Keawe-Sagapolutele. He led all true freshmen with a 79.4 passing grade this year. Cal also added plenty of weapons for JKS to play with from the portal.

Cal is not the most unlikely team in PFF’s preseason top 25, though, as Oklahoma State, which went 1-11 this past season, is at No. 25.

So does PFF’s ranking of Cal at No. 21 make sense when no other way-too-early preseason rankings mention Cal?

Let’s start with the premise that there are always teams that seemingly come from nowhere to have strong seasons.

Forty-nine teams received votes in the 2025 preseason AP top 25 poll, including Toledo, Army and Louisiana. Vanderbilt, which had gone 7-6 the previous season, and Virginia, which had been 5-7 in 2024, did not receive a single vote.

Vanderbilt, which ended up 6-2 in the SEC, wound up ranked 15th after being as high as ninth. It was the first time in 13 years and just the second time in 43 years that the Commodores finished with a winning conference record.

Virginia ended up ranked 16th after being as high as 11th. Like Cal, the 2025 season was the Cavaliers’ first winning season since 2019.

Even Indiana was only ranked 20th in the 2025 preseason poll, and the Hoosiers became a 16-0 national champion that is being compared with the top teams of the era.

The previous year, Indiana was coming off a 3-9 season before first-year head coach Curt Cignetti directed the Hoosiers to a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Cal will have a first-year coach in 2026 in Tosh Lupoi. Lupoi’s situation is not identical to the Indiana case since Cignetti had had success as a head coach previously at James Madison and other lower-division schools. But Cignetti made an immediate impact at a Big Ten school that had a long history of mediocrity, taking the Hoosiers to unprecedented heights.

The point is, there are always teams that unexpectedly rise into the rankings after forecasts suggested otherwise.

Of course, that does not necessarily mean that Cal will be one of those teams in 2026.

However, it seems the Bears have the prerequisite: a quarterback who could become elite in sophomore Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele.

Furthermore, Lupoi, general manager Ron Rivera and assistant general manager Marshall Cherrington seem to be doing pretty well in the transfer portal.

(See Cal transfer tracker of players going in and out here.)

As of January 22, 247Sports ranks Cal’s incoming transfers as the 13th-best transfer group in the country, and the best in the ACC.

How that will all fit together remains to be seen, and Cal will need some breaks to move into the top 25. Virginia played four overtime games in 2025 and won three of them, and the Cavaliers beat Washington State by two points on a late safety.

So good fortune plays a role.

PFF is clearly in the minority in placing Cal in its preseason top 25, but if PFF says it’s possible, maybe it is.

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