The Pete Carroll era was an anomaly. SoCal is again who they were prior to Carroll (a 7 to 9 win team that will hit double digit wins every few years). Though it will be harder to do that now that they are in a real power conference.
I dislike Carroll immensely (I'm a 49ers fan as well) - but dude is one of the best there has been. He made SoCal, not the other way around.