Ahh thank you! I remembered vaguely going though this thread a while ago.
Spolier: It is just a coincidence.
From what I read - there's no conclusive answer to it though. What Joey Ka said about FT makes sense but still cross-training might have had an impact there as well.
About the order of players changing for no apparent reason - there is an apparent reason. As you correctly observed, the older players went down the order, probably because of "invisible" drops.
I will keep digging into it. And as Joey noted - FT is the easiest possible way to gather enough data.
Thanks once again!