I think we've seen this before. TCU, Cincinnati, Boise St., Louisville, and notably Utah...
There is threshold for what a non-power conference team can do and it's fairly high. They are good enough to beat a top ten team and that's the hallmark this sort of program. They are not good enough to win a championship without a tremendous amount of luck, or to beat a top 4 team without help really.
For example, the 2010 TCU team was undefeated. They met a one loss Wisconsin team that really wasn't that great to begin with, but they won by 2 points in a game in which they had 84 less yards of offense and held the ball 8 less minutes (Wisconsin's quarterback was pretty bad completing only 12 passes for 159 yards to go along with negative rushing stats).
That's the sort of game these teams can win. We know about the famous Boise State victory over #7 Oklahoma by one point. Obviously Oklahoma did not play their best game. Ironically one of the more lopsided of these sort of games was the 2009 Sugar Bowl where Alabama clearly did not want to be there and Utah took advantage. JPW was pretty bad in that game, throwing 2 interceptions and Alabama's offense didn't show up, gaining only 208 yards. I doubt that happens this game.
IMO, JPW did a great job not to throw 5 ints. Bama's offensive strength that year was running behind a great left side of the OL. Well, Andre Smith, LT, was out and Mike Johnson, LG, was injured early, so the left side was gone. Bama could no longer run the ball and they were on top of JPW almost by the time the snap got to him. There has been complaints about play calling this year - some justified, some not - but the play calling was truly bad in that one. CJM never rolled JPW out or did anything else to help in order that he might have an outside chance of completing a pass. But like this year at times, the primary problem was a poorly performing OL; in this case if was because of injury.
The D was late to the game, giving up 21 points in the first 10 minutes, then held them to 10 for the next 50. Javy's punt returns were about the only thing that Bama could do to move the ball - as usual, especially when Bama needed it - he was spectacular. (Along with Blake Sims, maybe my two favorite Bama players over many decades of watching Alabama football.)
Utah was just better than Alabama that day but IMO, they are a step above what Cinn is (though kudos to them for their great year and almost beating UGA (though depleted) last year), and this Bama is leaps and bounds better than the 2008 Bama team.