I tend to agree, but it’s hard to know exactly how it went down from our outsiders perspective. They’re implying that they asked for changes before submission,

I tend to agree, but it’s hard to know exactly how it went down from our outsiders perspective. They’re implying that they asked for changes before submission, and that they weren’t given a final call to ask for their names to be removed if it came to that. Personally I would be less skeptical about this version of events with more transparency about whatever technical issues they had with the manuscript